National Resource Center for Youth Services: Oklahoma Successful Adulthood Program

Session 6: Preparing and Supporting Youth Advocates

This is part six of a 6-part series of lessons on Authentic Youth Engagement and Youth/Adult Partnership.™ All the sessions of this course are eligible for CEU credit from the University of Oklahoma. By attending all six sessions, you will earn a course certificate, but you do not have to attend all six sessions to receive CEUs for each individual course.

In this lesson, we’ll be focusing on making you the best adult ally to prepare and support youth to become highly effective advocates. You’ll learn the Trauma-Informed Methods of Engagement™ for youth advocacy model. We’ll start learning about ways to set yourself up for success as a trusted adult ally with clear roles and responsibilities. Next, we’ll dig in deep to find ways (training, strategic sharing, logistical details, audience awareness, messaging) to properly prepare youth/young adults ahead of time for involvement in events/activities. We’ll cover the types of verbal and nonverbal support you can give to support youth and young adults during event/activity. Then you’ll learn ways to engage in meaningful reflection by debriefing with youth/young adults for personal and professional growth. Lastly, we’ll review together unintended consequences of Y/YA involvement and apply what we’ve learned to minimize the chance of re-traumatization. You’ll leave this training, a trauma-informed adult ally who is ready to engage youth and young adults to be the best advocates for themselves and for systems change. 

About Authentic Youth Engagement for Adult Allies

This engaging online training course will help adult allies learn how to engage youth/young adults and make those critical connections that leads to transformation. You will learn the Trauma-Informed Methods of Engagement™. We will discuss how to easily apply social learning to empower youth to reach their goals and how to increase youth success by simply asking trauma-informed questions. While having youth voice is critical to shaping the way that services and supports are delivered, protecting against unintended consequences is just as important. You will be actively engaged in reviewing and reacting to real life youth-involved scenarios to practice your skills in understanding Hart’s Ladder. This will help you come up with the most appropriate level of engagement for your youth in care.

After registering, you will receive a link to the Zoom meeting.

These sessions will be highly interactive. This training is not a webinar. To receive credit for this workshop, each participant must have their own device (tablet or computer), with the camera turned on and their face visible for the duration of the session. Participants must attend all three sessions to receive a certificate of completion.

Please watch for update e-mails regarding video links, additional activity materials such as paper, pencils, markers, etc.