Reaching out to High-Risk Adolescents (From Courage to Care: Responding to the Crisis of Children with AIDS, P 159-170, 1990, Gary Anderson, ed. -- See NCJ-127599)

• NCJ Number: 127604
• Author(s): O C Hernandez; S E Torkelsen
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 12 pages
• Sale Source: Child Welfare League of America, Inc.
• Publication Type: Program Description (Model)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Covenant House in New York City opened a residential treatment program for runaway and homeless adolescents with AIDS in late 1988. AIDS has a disproportionate effect on homeless youth who engage in behaviors putting them at high risk of infection.

Abstract

These high risk behaviors are precipitated by a cycle resulting from no home, no work, and no family support and consisting of drug abuse and risky sexual behaviors. Covenant House planned a holistic program addressing the social, psychological, spiritual, and medical needs of adolescents with HIV infection. A new facility was constructed, and members of a multi-disciplinary staff recruited. The special-needs program provides medical care to arrest or slow the disease process, psychosocial and life management skills to foster a healthier lifestyle and modify high risk behaviors, and spiritual support to help cope with issues of death and dying.