Order 20 or more copies of the workbook and receive a free copy of On Your Own as a Young Adult Facilitator's Guide.
Every year, 25,000 of our nation's youth age out of foster care and are forced to be on their own. In most cases, these young people leave the foster care system to become homeless, incarcerated, or forced into welfare.
When they age out of the system, these young adults lack the self-sufficiency skills needed to make it as contributing assets to society. To succeed, they must learn to take control of their own lives and become self-advocates.
On Your Own as a Young Adult is an outstanding educational program that empowers youth by offering the skills and creating the desire to find a better path through life by employing self-advocacy. Several critical components of self-advocacy include setting goals, exhibiting strengths, analyzing the setup of organizations, depersonalizing issues, finding and using allies and mentors, and understanding others' needs.
The curriculum achieves its mission by creating an understanding of the self-advocacy process and how essential it is for reaching one's goals. Features of this book include:
- Easy-to-use format that enables young adults to read, discuss, and practice skills such as setting goals, exhibiting strengths, and depersonalizing situations.
- Real-life scenarios that illustrate young adults fully engaged in work or education environments, providing models that reinforce the readers' awareness that they too can fit in.
- Interesting topics and approaches that keep both young adults and facilitators involved in active discussion and critical thinking.
- Relevant case studies that use narratives to further establish understanding of the self-advocacy process.
- Engaging projects that enable young adults to make connections and collect advice on achieving long-term career goals.
Chapter 1: Planning and Reaching Your Goals
Chapter 2: How Systems and Organizations Work
Chapter 3: Importance of Your Strengths
Chapter 4: Transitions
Chapter 5: Finding Mentors and Allies
Chapter 6: Depersonalizing Issues and Discovering the Needs of Others
Chapter 7: Self-Advocacy Presentations
Chapter 8: Rules, Laws, and Rights
Paul Pitcoff is co-founder and director of Education of the Youth Advocacy Center. Working with teens and professionals at YAC, he developed and directs the Getting Beyond the System self-advocacy workshops. Pitcoff has experience as a college professor, filmmaker, and attorney. He is founding chair of the Department of Communications at Adelphi University, where he produced dozens of award-winning documentary films.
After 20 years as a tenured professor, Pitcoff studied law at Cardozo School of Law and briefly practiced in family court. He combined his education, communications and legal experiences to design a curriculum that would meet the needs of teens entering the early phases of their career development.
Betsy Krebs, Esq., is the co-founder and executive director of the Youth Advocacy Center in New York City. Betsy has led the development of the YAC’s program to help teens succeed through self-advocacy education for more than 10 years and guides the national expansion of the Getting Beyond the System model. An expert on teen’s rights, self-advocacy, and child welfare for teenagers, she has written numerous publications for and about teenagers in foster care and about self-advocacy.
Krebs received her J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before starting Youth Advocacy Center, she worked as an attorney representing foster care children.
For interview requests or questions about Pitcoff or Krebs, contact Selena Dehne at sdehne@jist.com or (651) 215-7548.
"On Your Own as a Young Adult provides a set of tools that every youth needs, especially those from challenged backgrounds. The book's 'Socratic' method patiently teaches—in a 'non-teachy' method—a disciplined but fun approach to engaging the world, for a job, for a career, for a successful life. Every youth agency should be using this approach. We do.”
—David Johnston, senior program associate for Life Skills Casey Family Services, New Haven, Connecticut
