What is Youth Connections?
Youth Connections strengthens the ability of educators and schools to provide a school culture and climate that meets the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students, including those who experience significant challenges. With a focus on social emotional development and career-connected learning, Youth Connections provides educators and schools with technical assistance, resources, and support to improve mental health, well-being, and resiliency for adolescents in communities across Colorado.
The Positive Impacts of Social Emotional Development
Most youth spend a significant proportion of their day in school. Schools must not only promote the academic development of students, but also their social and emotional growth to fuel school success. Many students experience social and emotional hurdles that interfere with their ability to learn and engage in their education. Educators, students, families, and community stakeholders all have a critical role to play in building the connective tissue that sustains individual well-being, school unity and inclusion of diverse experience, a vibrant culture, and a safety net of responsive intervention for students who need it.
Career-connected learning offers tangible, relevant experiences that promote hope and help students to build a positive vision of their future self. Together, a clear education-to-career pathway and increased hope can have significant impact on student engagement and mental health while also supporting economic recovery, another salient issue across the state.
How Youth Benefit
As districts statewide continue to navigate the unprecedented impacts of a global pandemic, Colorado is witnessing a youth mental health crisis that, while not new, has reached urgent levels as both a public health and public education challenge. Youth Connections has been a breakthrough long-term space for educators, students, and communities to imagine and build the social-emotional ecosystems of the future.
Youth Connections strengthens the capacity of schools to promote social, emotional, and mental wellbeing for middle and high school students. It also provides career-connected learning to offer students tangible, relevant experiences that promote hope, helping them to build a positive vision for their future.
From the independent evaluations of Youth Connections over the past three years, we know this approach effectively supports districts and communities in their journey to implement a system-wide approach to social and emotional development for students.
Growing the reach of Youth Connections offers the opportunity to position more Colorado schools to boost mental health and re-engage students.
Social Emotional Ecosystem
Youth Connections is a project grounded in the Social Emotional Ecosystem, which includes four rings. The Social Emotional Ecosystem helps teams apply a system lens to their social emotional learning and behavioral health work and situates each ring within an equity context.
