396 Pageviews Read Stories
- EIN 22-3223641
- 617-889-5210
- 101 Park Street Chelsea MA 02150 USA
- www.rocainc.com
- Add to Favorites
Promote This Nonprofit
Nonprofit Overview
Causes: Children & Youth, Children & Youth Services, Human Services, Youth Development
Mission: Roca is a performance-based andoutcomes-driven organization that helps young people to change their behaviorand shift the trajectories of their lives through a High-Risk YouthIntervention Model. Roca serves very high-risk young people in Chelsea, Revereand East Boston;our missionis to help these disengaged and disenfranchised young peoplemove out of violence and poverty.
TheWork: A Solution. Rocahelps young people to change their behavior and shift the trajectories of theirlives through our High-Risk Youth Intervention Model. The Model is basedon cognitive-behavioral intervention to enable young people to move toward theoutcomes of economic independence and living out of harm’s way. Roca’s intervention model is based on aframework for change used in medical and mental health fields andincludes: 1) relentless outreach through transformationalrelationships (our intensive case management model); 2)stage-based programmingtoward economic independence (life skills, educational and pre-vocational,and employment programming) and 3)work with engagedinstitutional partners.
Roca works intensively with 635 young peoplea year and provides less intensive services to over 150 young people. These young people are: in gangs, on the streets and in and out of prison; somehave dropped out of school or are close to it; they are young parents, some asyoung as 12 and others with several children; and many are immigrants, far fromhome, left with memories of unspeakable violence.
Geographic areas served: Chelsea, Revere, East Boston
Programs:
The Work: A Solution. Roca helps young people to change their behavior and shift the trajectories of their lives through our High-Risk Youth Intervention Model. The Model is based on cognitive-behavioral intervention to enable young people to move toward the outcomes of economic independence and living out of harm’s way. Roca’s intervention model is based on a framework for change used in medical and mental health fields and includes:
- relentless outreach through transformational relationships (our intensive case management model)
- stage-based programming toward economic independence (life skills, educational and pre-vocational, and employment programming) and,
- work with engaged institutional partners.
Roca works intensively with 635 young people a year and provides less intensive services to over 150 young people. These young people are: in gangs, on the streets and in and out of prison; some have dropped out of school or are close to it; they are young parents, some as young as 12 and others with several children; and many are immigrants, far from home, left with memories of unspeakable violence.
The core of our High-Risk Youth Intervention Model is the Transformational Relationship (TR). Youth workers do not wait for these young people to show up at our doors, they find young people where they are. It is the relentlessness of a youth worker who shows up day after day, no matter what, that awakens hope in a young person. As trust builds, the youth worker strategically develops a relationship that is a commitment between young person and youth worker: they are now “in it” together.
Each component of Roca’s High-Risk Youth Intervention Model is designed to drive toward outcomes and is based on the five Stages of Change, commonly accepted in medical and mental health fields, that an individual typically moves through to improve and then sustain life changes. The second part of Roca’s Model, Stage-Based Programming engages young people literally “where they are at” in the stages of change cognitively and behaviorally. By using this evidence-based programming strategy, Roca can move young people along a pathway of education, pre-vocational training, life skills, transitional employment and unsubsidized employment opportunities.
As change can be extemely difficult, young people often relapse and return to negative and destructive behavior. Unlike other programs, Roca turns this setback into opportunity, relenltessly finding and following up with a young person again and again, a 100 times, 500 times, until the young person is ready to trust. This is what it takes to re-engage young people and keep them from slipping back into harm’s way. This is how we keep young people alive.
The third part of the High Risk Youth Intervention Model is the Engaged Institution Strategy. The institutions that are in a young person’s life—schools, local government, agencies, and organizations—are just as influential to the needs and growth of a young person as Roca. Recognizing this, Roca creates partnerships with these institutions, benefiting from each other’s expertise. In dialogue and action, over time, Roca continues enacting alternative, restorative policies in our communities that will result in a systemic change of how our communities address this needs of this high-risk youth population.
Prochaska’s stages of change are: 1) Pre-contemplation: Young person is not thinking about or has explicitly rejected change; 2) Contemplation: Young person is thinking about change and perhaps