What is the definition of the "outreach program"? The outreach program is different from our traditional operating mode, where organizations provide services within the service system. Traditionally, we would make an appointment with the case individual, ask them to come to the organization and have a talk. The biggest difference between this service model and the outreach program is that the latter trains our staff and delivers our services directly to those in need. Or, we can set up several bases, care centers, so that those in need can feel very comfortable to come to the centers and receive our services. So what is our target group? The outreach program is very suitable for children and youths. In the United States, the outreach program is particularly applied to youths on the streets, as they are usually unwilling to come to the organizations and receive the so-called services. So why is the demand for children and youths particularly high? In addition to what I've just said that youth is usually reluctant to come to the organization for services, in fact, more importantly, many kids do not consider themselves as a person with problems. "I don't have any problem, the ones that have problems are those adults who think that I have problems." In other words, the perceptions of youths and children about the existence of their problems are different from the perceptions of adults. We think that dropping out from school is a problem. youths think that I just don't want to learn, so why should I ask for help? What do I ask help for? Therefore, youth usually does not consider himself as the one with a problem to be solved. In that case, he will not come and make an appointment with us to talk about how to solve his problems. So how should we satisfy their needs? Take the initiative. We take the initiate to contact them, and we hope to provide the help they need timely and necessarily. The second possibility is that many children have had poor experiences interacting with adults. So he was unwilling to believe that someone would be willing to help him, and this situation is even more obvious for the youths who have been placed. The environment he stayed and the service system he was in were not necessarily the friendliest to him, so he doesn't quite believe the so-called social workers here are really willing to help him, to satisfy his needs and solve his troubles. And in terms of their activity range, since we reach out during the outreach program, children and youths can comfortably partake in activities in their accustomed regions and environments. Therefore, the nature of regionalism and clustering can be easily seen in youth group. Since they have a strong nature of regionalism and clustering, it is suitable for our staff to walk directly into the environment they gather To visit them at a fixed time and location, to contact them, talk to them and see what their needs are. So the role of the outreach program staff, as you may find out in the previous video, they play a very different role from what we traditionally thought of as the so-called counseling-oriented approach. They play many important linking roles, such as the role of windows. Social workers of the outreach program have to receive professional social work trainings, and they also have to understand the cultures and values of young people, and be flexible in using multiple social work practices and techniques to build relationships with high-risk youths of different gender, age and needs. Social workers build trust in relationships, so that we can provide youths with follow-up services. That's why we call it the role of windows. In addition to windows, they are also bridges. After our initial contact with these children and youths on the streets, out staff will look at their needs and decide whether we should provide them with services they need, such as education, medical care, or social support. Also, go further to see if there are other longer-term resources to connect to and keep serving them. So, the role of bridges is also quite obvious. Moreover, in the process of doing outreach services, social workers also make adjustments depending on different targets, different characteristics of service object, and the depth of the relationship. There was a social worker in Taiwan, Miss Zhang Yi Fen, who had worked in the outreach program for some time. In her master's thesis, she sorted and analyzed the service models of youth outreach program in Taiwan. For the diversity of roles being played by outreach social workers, she divides the roles of windows and bridges into six categories, including friendship, education, service, cooperation, community work and advocacy. In discussing about friendship, education and service roles, the focus of social worker's work is to directly serve those youths we see with needs. As for the role of cooperation and community work, it is about serving people from youth's outside system. For example, we may see that his family is in need, the school he attends has some problems, and the community he is in need jobs. Therefore, cooperation and community work extend our care from one individual to the system. And the advocacy role is even more important. By approaching these youths, we let the public and policy makers understand their needs. In the process of policy-making, it also helps a lot to set up the content of services to meet the needs of these youths. After talking about the role of outreach workers, let's think about the characteristics of outreach programs. Outreach work has two main features, one is preventive, the other is proactive, What is "Preventive"? Outreach programs take preventive measures, That is, identify high-risk teenagers by entering young people's groups. Young teenagers may not have clear needs and problems at the moment, but by letting them know about the existence of an organization or service, they know where to get help if one day they encounter difficulties, or when their friends, their families or someone they know need a helping hand. As for "Proactive", compared to social workers we talked about, who always sit in offices and wait for case owner to find them, we change a little bit. This time, we walk into the community, we make a move and actively care for the youth in a community. In the previous video, what we saw was the Western District Youth Service Center, also the oldest team in Taiwan to provide outreaching services. They started almost 20 years ago. In 1996, The city government commissioned the Catholic Good Shepherd Foundation to start such an outreach service center, In their outreach service, there's a very lovely abbreviation: F. W. D. T. T. What does it stand for? The first F is for "Find and Search", During an outreach program, it's not that easy as we saw in the video, they have to do tons of preparation. First, they need to investigate the areas of youth activity in the community, By area investigation and visiting stores to find out where teenagers often gather in a particular community, or otherwise, if they miss the targets, how can they even start their work? After Finding, we need to "Witness". We have to actually witness they gather, Now we know the time and location, we can start to assess their needs. D stands for Deep. We have to know and deeply understand these teenagers. By understanding them, we can develop appropriate service plans, and carry out some services for them through some cases or group work. the first T stands for "Treatment". we focus on individual needs of these teenagers and provide corresponding services. from our previous cases, programs, or community, we link experiential learning resources and deliver to their lives. The last T stands for Track. We continuously track the life condition of teenagers that is, even though their needs are fulfilled, as long as they still live in the community, our staff will continuously keep track of them, care for them, understand their needs, and find out whether their needs are satisfied continuously and whether their physical and mental conditions are improved. The process of taking care of them may not always go so smoothly. Any base may collapse or disappear. What to do when this happens? Once the number of people of a base begins to drop and teenagers no longer linger there, they will try to start a new cycle of "Finding" again. In this process, social workers will put teenagers in the most central position, trying to reach them and serve them. Yet the outreach service model has corresponding advantages and limitations. From a classification point of view, as I mentioned before, on-street service is a type, and another type is called base, that is the Drop-in Center. Some care centers have the concept of bases, allowing teenagers to access freely. Social workers will make fixed-point contact, which is the service model that walking into the community as we see in the film, in a specific location and build up relationships, find problems, provide services, or provide referrals. This service model that I just mentioned makes it easier for us to get familiar with activities and subculture of teenagers and to build up relationships in a natural situation. This also helps avoid the embarrassment that they may feel when they come to the organization. However, there are some limitations in this service model, Sometimes, the community is noisier, more crowded, we can only talk to the child briefly, we may not be able to reach the topic that we want to discover. In addition, when the composition of people is fixed and no new member join this group of children, it will be more difficult for us to break through and to find teenagers in need. Another problem, which is also the season why lots of street work failed to make progress, is that when we notice these teenagers in trouble or in need, we find no one to provide service to them and organizations to continue the job afterward do not exist. Related resources are not enough. From the film, we knew that we usually reach out at night since children are in school during daytime. The environment might be noisy and free-flowing, not easy to talk. For instance, if you were in an Internet cafe and played hard with the online video game, you would not like to talk with anyone. You don't care about the social workers! Therefore, in this kind of environment, it would not be easy to do the outreach program. In addition, some people take into account the safety of workers. After all, the workers are not familiar with the community as the children do. When social workers arrive to the field, they need to determine whether this environment is safe and acceptable to strangers. Under the model of bases, we have developed another kind of work called community advocacy activities. We usually choose the places where youths often gather, where they go shopping or hanging around, we do some group or advocacy activities to reach out to different youths. For example, sex education or quiz contests. These activities have the advantage of being very active and less dogmatic. It is unlike school class, and it can play edutainment function. But its limitation may be being a very brief activity in the mall, and participants may not be your targets of service. But still, it may have some effect on advocacy. So what is the major difficulty of the outreach program? As I just mentioned, the outreach program has its benefits and limits, so it's inevitable that we have some discussions upon working on it. For all helpers, I think it's quite simple that we are more than willing to help others solve problems. Those who come to my class, are eager to learn some methods for helping people and and solving problems, even making oneself be able to overcome what they question, ain't they? With that ideal, the staff, entering into the community, may often feel helpless and frustrated. Why? Because you only want to solve the problem. Outreach programs are not aiming to problem-solving. They are not going to solve someone's problem immediately. Outreach programs let us witness that many problems are not caused by individuals, However, they are caused by family, school, and society, still remember the ecosystem concept? Therefore, when social workers saw this phenomenon and finds themselves unable to change anything, sometimes I feel that my jobs is no accomplishment. What is the value of my work? I looked at this child, and his or her problem still exists. Is my companionship useful? Another problem happens when I find their needs. ideally, outreach workers do not provide services directly, they connected to external resources. They let children first accept the system, and then let other workers serve children's needs. But we found that in such a service connection process, if the latter part of the evacuation unit does not exist, sometimes these outreach workers turn themselves from outreaching to problem-solving social workers. At this time, young people may think it is very strange. Yesterday you still treated me friendly. Why are you so serious today? During the change of roles, the youth may be confused. It also somehow violates the principle of outreach programs, which only focus on "outreaching". Also, do these academic restrictions represent that when we look at these issues or methods of work, we still focus on solving problems itself? This logic will get stuck in our minds, makes a helper feels like, "Why can the problems be solved even after I try this hard to help?" Why? Behind so many questions, it comes back to what I said at the beginning of the class: Have we forgotten the maintenance of the rights of the Young as the main body? If what we really want is right maintenance, is it so important to solve problems? If we cannot solve the problems, should you feel frustrated? In this lecture, we started from a rather traditional way to make conversation with the needs to learn the fact that inevitably we have to make conversation with the teenagers and what principles and techniques we have to learn and master in order to have a talk with them. after that, through the film, I let you watch and understand strategies Taiwan adapted to make some breakthrough in individual conversation in the field of teenager caring service. With such strategy, I hope I can explain to you the rationale and connotation of these practices and what a teenager-centered service is. In the last lecture, let's learn and reflect how we can walk toward the goal of maintaining youths' rights starting from meeting their needs. Let's do this together!
