Views & News
Interviews, essays, podcasts, news from both inside and outside Youth Catalytics: you’ll find it all here. We welcome your ideas, input, conjectures, rejoinders and anything else you have say. We’re a community of professionals who care about young people, and want the information and opinions expressed here to be as vital and vibrant as they are.
Add your expertise to our latest Views & News feature: Voices From The Field. Contact Mindi Wisman for more information at mwisman@youthcatalytics.org
‘She’s still here!’ Saving trafficking victims in Florida
The difficult realization at the core of our services for minor victims of trafficking is the acknowledgement that however nefarious and immoral the actions of traffickers may be, they are successful at meeting the needs of youth through their own manipulative and exploitive means. The only way we can compete with them is to demonstrate to victims, from the very first encounter, that we can help them in a compassionate and therapeutic manner.
Helping young people cope with post-lockdown stress
Almost anyone who knows someone in middle or high school sees signs of the stress that is part of adolescence; I’ve talked with young people who cut, whose hair fell out in patches. But in these pandemic months, our stress has been as self-contained as everything else
Teaching about trauma in schools and communities that have experienced it
Healing a system is not very different from healing an individual; it starts with awareness.
Pet-assisted therapy brings companion animals to children and teens in need
Pets are non-threatening, they give unconditional love, they boost everybody’s self-esteem. I was just reading notes children had written in a second-grade class I work with. One note said, ‘Maj-En gives me his paw. Maj-En loves me.’
