LAYC Behavioral Health Program for Homeless Youth Description:
Latin American Youth Center (LAYC), a nationally recognized, community-based youth development agency with almost 50 years of service provision to low-income youth from communities of color in the DC metropolitan region, requests support for expanding community infrastructures that integrate behavioral health treatment and services for substance use disorders and co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, including linkages to permanent housing and other critical services for youth and families experiencing homelessness in the District of Columbia.
In compliance with DC and federal guidelines and requirements, the proposed program will address the needs of 40 youth per six-month treatment period, for a total of 80 youth served per year for the five years of the grant period. Staff, including a Clinical Supervisor, Mental Health Counselor, Substance Use Counselor, and Outreach/Case Manager will provide: outreach; treatment, including screening, diagnostic assessments, treatment plans, crisis intervention, and individual counseling/treatment using evidence-based practices; drug testing; case management, including linkages to permanent housing, benefits enrollment, community support, medication management, primary care and other referrals, and wraparound services such as life skills workshops. Youth presenting with mental health, substance use, and co-occurring disorders will be treated using four culturally accessible Evidence-Based Practices: 1) Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), 2) Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), 3) Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA), and 4) the GAIN-I assessment.
Services will be provided by bilingual staff, experienced working with vulnerable, including homeless, youth. Proposed program staff have attended LAYC’s Positive Youth Development and LGBTQ Ally trainings and internal and external trainings on cultural competency, unaccompanied minors, and immigration and immigrant populations. Evaluation data, collected through the SAMHSA-operated database system and data collection tool and our Efforts-to-Outcomes (ETO) database that collects demographic, output, and outcomes measures, will determine program success and the impact on program participants. An Evaluator will support the evaluation of program outcomes, including reporting on program data.