Building Strong Community Partnerships/Outreach''

OHTP should create partnerships with agencies and individuals in the Community who provide a myriad of services needed by transition aged youth/young adults. Examples of the types of services that young adults need and want include but are not limited to: mental health, drug and alcohol, workforce development, education, housing, food pantries, physical healthcare, LGBTQ, intellectual disability, juvenile justice and peer support. Partner Agencies should be a mix of public and private service providers.

Agencies who enter into partnerships with OHTP must agree to the values of Youth Voice/Youth Choice, Youth Leadership and Youth Involvement. For services to transition aged youth/young adults to work, the youth/young adult must desire to receive the service and see value in the service. The youth/young adult must not only feel heard, but they truly must be heard. Planning must be youth/young adult driven. Trust between provider(s) and youth/young adult is a must to create a success driven environment for the youth/young adult.

The lead OHTP Agency must not endeavor to replace/supplant services provided by other service providers but seek to add additional/missing services to the array of services provided to assist in creating a successful transition process for the youth/ young adult.

OHTP’s goal is a win-win relationship for the youth/young adult and service providers, as well as a win-win between providers.

A goal of the OHTP process should be to help partner agencies identify staff who want to work with the transition aged youth population; not all counselors, social workers, therapist want to work with this population.

As the work of the OHTP lead agency progresses – youth/young adults and partner agencies need to be members of all sub-committees and work groups. The youth/ young adults must be active, completely engaged members of committees. Remember that interacting with “adult professionals” can be intimidating, so coaching/support for the youth/young adults may be needed; also, the professionals are usually on the committees in their “work capacity” and are paid – the youth/ young adults should be provided a stipend for their time and travel expenses as well. A monthly OHTP Partnership Meeting which includes all partnership agencies, youth/ young adults involved in OHTP and OHTP staff is a way to create on-going dialogue; identify new or existing services in the community that youth/young adults can benefit from receiving; share statistics, evaluation and trends; and have frank discussions (lead by youth/young adults) around their needs.

Community outreach can involve use of multiple forms of social media/apps that are used by youth/young adults as well as face-to-face contact. Face-to-face contact requires going to where youth/young adults are located/frequent: schools, universities, fairs, concerts, events put on by partner agencies, libraries, educational events, workforce events, detention homes or other state/county juvenile correctional facilities, children services agencies. The outreach team should include transition aged youth involved with OHTP; Youth/young adults want to hear from peers. Literature, pamphlets and items can be given away to those in attendance. After interacting with youth/young adults at the event/site, provide an opportunity for youth/young adults to sign up for services or learn more about services that can be provided. This is where a strong Youth Coordinator surrounded by a committed core of youth/young adults comes into play.

OHTP should also join community taskforces creating better pathways for transition to adulthood or working to alleviate crisis conditions for youth/young adults. There are a multitude of these types of taskforces: creating a drop-in center, ending youth homelessness, ending youth violence, ending youth hunger are just a few examples; there are many, many more.