OJJDP PUBLICATIONS & RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO NATIVE YOUTH
Breaking the Ice: Creating a Dialogue With Youth OJJDP-Sponsored, October 2017. This sheet provides Tribal communities with ideas on how to educate youth about tough situations. 2 pages. NCJ 251735.
The UNITY Peer Guides and Healing Indigenous Lives Initiative is dedicated to spreading awareness of available resources to Native youth to help increase community safety protective factors and reduce youth risky behaviors contributing to juvenile delinquency.
This fact sheet instructs youth workers on the importance and techniques of guiding youth on how to protect themselves from persons and situations that could harm them.
This guide advises that although it is the role of parents to discuss such issues with their children, youth workers can also have a beneficial role in educating youth about potential threats to their safety and well-being. It notes the importance of identifying the harmful behaviors of others that might adversely impact children; and they should understand that these harmful behaviors can occur with friends and relatives, not only with strangers. A teaching method suggested is posing examples of harmful behavior and asking children and youth to discuss how they would respond to protect themselves from such behavior. Other methods and guidance in teaching the recognition of and protective responses to potentially harmful behaviors are the modelings of healthy boundaries; being approachable; building a positive network of adults; and being familiar with the area in which you serve.
Sources
• Missing Kids, http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/publications/PDF10A.pdf
• Stop It Now, http://www.stopitnow.org/ohc-content/tip-sheet-8
• OJJDP, https://www.ojjdp.gov/jjjournal/jjjournal598/safe.html