Academic Achievement

Seattle Team for Youth

Seattle Team for Youth is a dropout prevention program involving community-based agencies that work with low-income youth ages 11-21 to help keep them in school and succeed in class.

Agency case managers maintain regular contact with participating youth, often meeting with them at school and working closely with school personnel. Case managers advocate for the youth’s various needs, helping them to access culturally appropriate tutoring, housing, health and mental health services, jobs, and addiction treatment services.

Participants have already dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out of school for one or more of the following reasons:

• School suspensions, expulsions or other school discipline problems
• Poor school attendance or truancy
• Failing grades
• Behind in credits needed to graduate from high school

Most participants are African American, African, Latino, Native American, Samoan and Southeast Asian, and live in southwest and southeast Seattle. The program focuses on these neighborhoods because they show the highest poverty rates, lowest school attendance rates, and largest number of youth with low grades.

Each participant is contacted by a case manager who assesses need and designs an individual service plan. Case managers work with the Seattle Public Schools, school-based health centers, Seattle Police Department detectives, juvenile probation officers, and other service providers to coordinate appropriate services.

Seattle Team for Youth was launched in 1989 and is funded by Seattle’s Families and Education Levy. The 2007-2008 school year budget is $1.3 million. Funding awards to nonprofit community-based organizations providing these services are determined through a competitive process that is conducted by the department at least once every four years with the current cycle ending in 2009.

2008 Funded Agencies and Programs

• Atlantic Street Center
• Center for Career Alternatives
• Consejo
• El Centro de la Raza
• Metrocenter YMCA
• Powerful Voices
• SafeFutures Youth Center
• Southwest Youth & Family Services
• United Indians of All Tribes Foundation

Eligibility and Applications

The Seattle Team for Youth Referral Coordinator connects youth to the agency that best matches their cultural and linguistic needs. (Youth are not accepted if we cannot meet their cultural and language needs.) Most participants live in southeast or southwest Seattle and attend or recently attended Cleveland, Franklin, Rainier Beach, Chief Sealth, West Seattle, South Lake, Marshall and Interagency high schools, and Meany, Madison, Aki Kurose, Denny and Mercer middle schools. Participants are generally not receiving other support services in the community.

To refer a youth to Seattle Team for Youth, call the referral coordinator at 206-233-7089 or fax the Seattle Team for Youth Referral Form to 206-621-5029. For a copy of the referral form, click here or pick it up at a participating school.

Information

For more general information about this program and other Seattle Human Services Department-funded youth programs, call 206-386-1026 or e-mail youthservices@seattle.gov.

Links

• Current Funding Opportunities
• News