Empowering Community-Based Programs for Youth Development

This article discusses the need for community-based programs for youth and their families and urges the social work profession to resume its historical leadership in such programs while incorporating recent theory and practice. The authors describe the reasons why social workers abandoned neighborhood-based youth development services, the intended outcomes of such services, and current societal and professional trends that support a revival of social work’s involvement in youth development. They discuss one school of social work’s current participation in a youth agency partnership and examine implications of the suggested revival for social work education. Collaboration among families, schools, diverse community services, agencies, and educators is emphasized.