ABSTRACT

Before delving into practices that have proved efficacious with these youth, it is necessary to define the population referred to in this chapter. The terms high-risk and at risk have been overused when referring to children and adolescents in need of services. It is not uncommon to go to conferences and read in books that “all youth are at risk.” While there may be some truth to that statement, the perspective of widespread risk can serve to invalidate some of the complexities and hardships of these youth’s lives. Using the term high-risk can perpetuate an illusion of control that locates the responsibility for clients’ behavior solely in their ‘choices,’ when in fact, much of the locus of control for such high-risk behaviors should be attributed to the environments in which they are raised and develop. Thus, the term high-risk represents an umbrella of contextualized issues that young people deal with, such as being ‘marginalized,’ ‘traumatized,’ ‘gang-involved,’ and so on. While all these terms could describe the young people discussed in this chapter; the term high-risk will be used for the sake of inclusiveness and communication.