How To Produce a “Is your Teen at Risk” Program
There are several key ingredients to a successful Teen at Risk program. Some of the most important are having enough time to plan, having local resources for parents to meet with and gather information and brochures from, and having the proper venue.
Target Audience
The ‘customers’ for a Is your Teen at Risk are the parents. While most topics in the program are appropriate, the drug trends program often has information that we do not wish to share with our teens if possible. Often there is a desire on the part of school officials to send groups of detention or “Saturday school” students to the program with their parents. Certainly, the parents meet the target audience and would benefit from the information, but the students are often disruptive.
Planning
Planning timelines vary but should include enough time to identify a venue, plan marketing, set up speakers and resources, and get the word out to your parent groups. Civic organizations, parent and teacher associations, school districts, and resource providers should all be at the table to join in the planning process.
Marketing
A media campaign contributes to a successful Teen at Risk program. In exit surveys, parents often cite school messaging systems (electronic mail and phone call systems) as the means by which they received word of the program. However, the programs that have received the most success also had media campaigns and advertising attached. Banners at street corners, flyers hung at local coffee shops, notices in local papers and even inserts in water bills or registration packets have all been considered to increase the name recognition and buy-in by area parents. These different levels of advertising should be planned in stages. Flyers or emails via PTA or district distribution should go out no later than one month before the event. Reminder notices should be distributed two weeks, and two days before the event takes place. Banners can go up at any time but should be no later than two weeks before the venue. Posting flyers at coffee shops, grocery stores, etc. should be similar to the banners.
Venue
The location where the forum is held depends on both the format of the program (lecture or workshop) and the type of community where the program will be held. If the goals of the producing agency are to bring several different school families together, a non-school venue is generally best. Practice has shown that often families and students will not travel to outside their immediately school “family” area to go to a rival or other school “family” facility. Community centers, public theaters, or other “neutral” venues are best in these circumstances. If the target audience is strictly from a single school “family” (i.e. a single high-school and the elementary and middle/junior schools that feed into it) then it is all right to host the program at one of the schools—preferably the high school level. Special consideration should be made for sound and lighting. Producing Teen at Risk involves multimedia presentations and large gymnasiums or halls are not always best.
Format
The format of the Teen at Risk program varies between a panel of speakers who address concerns specific to the community one at a time, also known as a “lecture” format, to a “workshop” format where different topics are presented individually in different rooms. Choosing which format works best will depend on what type of venue is available and what the producing agency wants to offer.
In the Lecture format, each presenter is given between 5 and 20 minutes to present the highlights of their topic. Some topics, like drug use signs and symptoms require a small group and one-on-one instruction so a large lecture hall isn’t the proper venue. These presenters can merely highlight their topic to the large group and agree to meet in the resource area for Q&A after the program. Other topics like Driving Safety or Drug Trends are often very interesting to the group and demand more of the program time. Lecture programs shouldn’t run more than 90 minutes to allow enough time for parents to visit the resource area booths and gather information, leaving the total time for the program under 2.5 hours. This type of program lends itself to the evening or morning time and its greatest benefits are the ease in planning and the limited complexity of the program.
The Workshop format generally starts with a large single meeting “welcome” and then breaks out to different smaller, personal workshops in different areas. Successful production of this type of format requires coordination between all the different workshop presenters. The workshop areas need to be close together so parents don’t loose interest or get lost. Instructors must be strictly held to a “bell-type” schedule for ending their meeting. Each workshop can be presented a number of times to allow all of the attendees an opportunity to see what they want. This format generally runs longer than the lecture format and may last a few hours. Its chief advantage is the more detailed information that is presented to the parents and the smaller, more intimate groups where the information is presented which often fosters more questions and answers. The drawbacks are the complexity of the planning necessary and the amount of time parents are required to invest.
Resource Area
The resource area should be established in a location central and easily visible from the program area. Resource providers in the fields of health care, education, social services, law enforcement, and prevention/intervention should be included in the area. Caution should be exercised to avoid promoting commercial enterprises. Individual products or services that are not based in a non-profit status should be carefully scrutinized to verify whether they meet the goals of the parent or host agency.
Topics
Topics presented at a Teen at Risk may include but are not limited to:
• Teen Driving
• Substance Abuse
• Sober Teen Presentation
• Teens and Technology
• Violence Awareness
• Gang Awareness
• Eating Disorders
• Cutting
• Gaming or Computer Addiction
• Social Hosting
The “Is Your Teen at Risk” program is an ongoing collaborative effort between the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Orange County Fire Authority, California Highway Patrol, the Capistrano Unified School District, Parents Teachers, and Students Association, California Youth Services, and others who serve our youth and are working together to educate the community on keeping our teens safe. The program was started in 2007 to meet the need of educating parents in Orange County, California and is provided free by the partner agencies to the community. The “Is Your Teen at Risk” website is hosted by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The program focuses on providing information and education to parents of teens. Groups interested in hosting or promoting a forum should review the material enclosed in this brochure to determine if the program meets their needs and the needs of their target audience.
For questions or to schedule a meeting please write or call:
Lt. Stacey Taylor
Orange County Sheriff’s Department
550 N. Flower Street
Santa Ana, CA 92703
Phone: (714) 647-4129
E-mail
Drug Use Is Life Abuse | P.O. Box 28 | Santa Ana, CA 92702