Youth thrive and succeed in programs that foster caring relationships between children and adults. These programs allow youth to bond with trusted adults and staff who encourage them to succeed. When staff have long-term relationships with after school program participants, they can identify changes in the child’s behavior that indicate a need for intervention.

A safe and secure environment that supports a child’s social and emotional development could also have a significant impact on improving a child’s academic performance. After-school programs need diverse offerings to provide the maximum number of “hooks” to attract youth. More classroom-style instruction of the same type that children receive in their day school program is not always better and must be complemented by creative and engaging curriculum taught by experienced, qualified and caring staff.

Several general themes emerged:
1) The Demand for Services: There is a huge demand for after school programs, especially for high school students who are particularly at risk without structured opportunities outside of school hours.
2) After-school programs are the new neighborhoods: Given residential housing and demographic patterns, after-school programs have become the new “neighborhoods” and, as such, are indispensable aspects of healthy communities.
3) Staffing Challenges: After school programs struggle with three major staffing issues: a general labor shortage, a prolonged over-reliance on part-time staff, and high turnover.
4) Relationship between social-emotional development and academic success: Programs that provide a safe and nurturing environment, foster children’s social-emotional development, and offer children and youth a variety of engaging structured activities can also have a positive impact in academic performance.
5) Narrow Funder Priorities: As funders have become increasingly specific and prescriptive in their funding priorities (generally with an emphasis on activities explicitly targeted at academic support and professional development), they may tend to lose out on view other critical aspects of effective programs. that is, socio-emotional development and the establishment of positive relationships between youth and adults.
6) The Collaboration Challenge: There is a strong need and desire for out-of-school program providers to develop collaborations, especially with their local school systems, and to build a network of similar programs to share resources and best practices However, there are a number of barriers to this type of collaboration, most notably a lack of staff time for the work required to build these organizational relationships.

High school students are required to participate in programs outside of school hours and if these children remain “unaffiliated” they are at real risk. Transportation is crucial to reaching and engaging high school students. While on-site after school programs are desirable for middle school youth, for these programs to be effective, transportation must be available to take children home. When schools prioritize providing and coordinating transportation, programs are very successful in reaching youth. For example, one school dismissed its high school students a few minutes early so that a school bus could take them to the nearby youth center and back without disrupting the bus schedule for the other children. Programs can benefit from being part of a local network of providers who can establish a “transportation loop” for various programs.

As mentioned earlier, youth benefit when programs can be part of a local system of joint program activities and services. Effective program collaboration depends on strong personal relationships between staff and teachers.

After-school programs are the new “neighborhoods” for youth. They have taken the place of nearby houses and yards where children used to be able to play safely after school. Today, even children who have their mother or father home in the afternoon rarely engage in unstructured play with neighboring children. Additionally, it is an accepted fact that youth left unsupervised or without some form of structured program option are at risk for negative behaviors.

The increased emphasis on academics makes it difficult to find program time and funding for the kinds of recreational and other activities that help youth develop socially and emotionally.

Schools believe they should collaborate with after school programs, but often don’t see after school programming as a priority. There are a number of barriers to collaboration with schools. These include:

1) Teachers do not support having youth and other staff in their classrooms after hours.
2) The growing emphasis on testing and academic achievement is beginning to overwhelm school staff and is becoming the overriding priority for faculty and school administration. This makes schools less willing than ever to collaborate on extracurricular programs, which they tend to see as unrelated to academics.
3) Severe fiscal restrictions on schools have made it increasingly difficult to collaborate.

Public school teachers hired to teach these after-hours programs must realize that students need different instructional strategies for these types of “extended day” programs to be successful. Students do not learn effectively if they must focus solely on rigorous academics for an entire extended day. This makes collaboration with after school programs even more important.

There are three basic staffing issues that affect the field outside of school hours:
1) there is a general labor shortage;
2) programs hire most staff as part-time workers; Y
3) There is a high staff turnover. Afterschool program staff are primarily part-time paraprofessionals. This is true even for public schools where the school will employ a paraprofessional. The result is that part-time staff stay on the job only until they can find a full-time position with benefits, contributing to high turnover.

As has been said several times, staff shortages and turnover are the main challenges programs face. Staff turnover inhibits the child/adult bond. Good shows are all about good people and good relationships. Young people thrive when they feel safe and are able to develop relationships with caring adults. When the staff leaves, the young people who have grown fond of them go through a “grieving” process.

While part-time employees need more training and support, they get less. Since most part-time employees have more than one job, even if organizations offer staff development opportunities, these people don’t have time to participate. Staff limitations also make collaboration difficult. Successful collaborations require staff time for planning and coordination, which is hard to come by for all programs. However, it is especially difficult for small programs that lack administrative staff to engage in collaborations.

While programs can sometimes access school buses, for this arrangement to work consistently, school departments will need to make a serious commitment to providing transportation for programs outside of school hours on a consistent basis.

There are a number of children with special needs integrated into the school day program, but these children are difficult to serve in after school programs. Even children with ADHD, the only group that due to medication are more easily incorporated into after-school programs, present a challenge. Medication policies for these children are becoming more complicated, making them more difficult to care for. Unfortunately, many of these children end up home alone after school, where they must administer their own medications.

Many funders are interested in supporting programs that focus on career preparation and academic support. While those types of activities are important, it is becoming disproportionately difficult to find money to support programs that build youth self-esteem and other issues related to youth social and emotional development. This is true even when it is widely accepted that young people need help building positive relationships with adults and their peer groups. Funding for program support such as transportation, direct service staff, youth outreach, or building organizational partnerships is hard to find. It is also difficult to raise money to integrate special needs students into programs outside of school hours; schools have few or no extracurricular activities for these students and there seems to be little interest from funders in developing these services.

Securing funding for activities that support the social and emotional development of youth is challenging because service outcomes are difficult to measure.

Funding for after school programs is becoming increasingly limited and prescriptive, especially the focus on academic support and/or remediation for youth in light of the new emphasis on testing and standards. This narrowing of funding priorities is counterproductive, especially for middle school programs that must be highly diverse, creative, and multifaceted to attract as many youth as possible.

These recommendations are very practical and reaffirm the priorities that had been discussed:
– Hire a full-time staff member to facilitate collaboration and coordination with other providers and the community at large;
– Develop and/or expand programs to serve high school youth;
– Increase outreach to “unaffiliated” older youth;
– Create more homework labs as part of a comprehensive after school program. Many parents do not have the educational background to be able to help their children. Also, because schools now cram so much learning into homework, even the most educated parents are finding that helping with homework can be very stressful;
– Expand the use of volunteers for program staff and homework labs by providing support and training;
– Seek ways to increase collaboration and integration with schools that can maximize the effective use of facilities and other resources;
– Work to increase parent involvement and family support services;
– Provide start-up funds to implement programs in small communities;
– Develop services for youth with special needs;
– Develop and implement more program collaborations in and out of school hours;