Pa Youth Leadership Newsletter-February 4, 2010
Hello Everyone,
Today I bring you a lot of news and notes from the past two weeks about new System of Care developments, as well as information regarding future opportunities for Youth Leadership in PA. Let’s start this letter off quickly by jumping right on in.
FACEBOOK GROUP
As a way to give everyone a different option for receiving news about Youth Leadership, I have created a facebook group that is available for everyone to join. The hope is that this facebook group will allow an easier way to discuss recent updates with other youth receiving them as well as helping to increase the understanding of the Systems of Care Grant for all of you. It is currently a closed group (meaning I have to approve requests to join), only for the reason of limiting discussions to youth already familiar and working with the SoC grant. It’s currently designed simply as another way to communicate information and not to greatly increase youth outreach, but it may serve as a start to such a movement. It’s important to note that the group is not officially associated with the grant or with the Youth and Family Training Institute.
To join the group, search for the group name: PA SoC Youth Leadership. Then just send a request to join.
(Note: As I’ve just created the group, content for it will be up hopefully throughout the next few days, but feel free to join now. I’ll have a section for ideas and plans for the future ready.)
STATE LEADERSHIP TEAM & PROJECT DIRECTOR UPDATE
The three youth positions on the State Leadership Team will very soon be finalized, so expect an announcement about who they are to be coming within the next week or two. Once the entire team is formed, expect the Systems of Care Grant to start really taking off. Alongside of that, the Project Director position has been narrowed down from 47 applicants to 8, and interviews of those 8 took place earlier this week by a team of 2 youth, 3 family members, and 4 professionals. This team will narrow the choice down to 3 people, and the final decision will be made by the State Leadership Team.
SYSTEMS OF CARE CONFERENCE IN D.C.
Next week there will be a conference in Washington D.C. for the new communities in Systems of Care (PA of course being one of them). A team of 10-12 people from PA will be heading down for the three day event to receive advice and talk about the current state of the SoC Grant with professionals in Systems of Care from all around the country (known as the TA Partnership). The youth representatives on the team of 10-12 people will be Paige Costa (Youth Support Partner, Montgomery County) and myself. We’ll be gathering as much information as possible to relay back to all of you, especially in regards to developing youth voice throughout the state. It should be a very beneficial and educational experience for all of us involved with the conference, but again, our job as youth will be taking in as much knowledge as possible for the purpose of helping all of us youth continue to successfully move forward with this initiative.
SCHEDULING ANOTHER CONFERENCE CALL
As my last e-mail mentioned, the previous conference call did not go as planned. I asked for responses from a lot of you about how you felt these e-mails were working, and I want to thank each and every one of you who responded to me. You all gave me great feedback about how you feel everything is working out so far. All of you still expressed interest in getting another conference call scheduled (which I definitely agree with), and so I would once again like to ask all of you for what times you will be available to make the call. I’d like it to be sometime during the week of February 15th, so keep that in mind when letting me know what times you can attend. So please send me what times work best for you by the end of next week, and I will get back to all of you when a time is set.
On a side note, if you would like me to contact you by phone the day of as a reminder for the conference call, let me know and send me your phone number and I will be sure to send a text/give a call an hour or so beforehand. This will go alongside sending an e-mail reminder this time the night before the call takes place.
FUTURE OF THE PA YOUTH LEADERSHIP NEWSLETTER
Once again, I must thank all of you for your great feedback over the last few weeks after the last e-mail I sent out. I heard a few problems regarding the amount of e-mails some of you receive, so I’ve already requested that the majority of information that needs to get out be sent through myself first. This way, I can condense all of the updates happening over the course of the week and give all of you everything you need to know in one e-mail rather than flooding your e-mail box if things get out of hand. Along those lines, I believe that I will start sending these newsletters out on a weekly basis. I’ve yet to decide on what day I will always be sending them out (either Thursday or Friday, I will let you know), but hopefully this system will allow all of you to know when you will be receiving updates from me and to check your inbox accordingly.
Thank you all once again for your participation with this Youth Leadership Initiative. I know it can sometimes be confusing as well as overwhelming. I’m doing what I can to make this stuff youth friendly, but it’s not exactly an easy thing to do. The more suggestions you all have the better (and hopefully the facebook group can open up some of this discussion), so please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions/complaints you may be having. Until next time, live long and prosper.
Brian Satterfield
Youth Advocate
Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Psychology (philosophy minor), Temple University
484-680-0068
flyerfan0028@hotmail.com
