Provider Profile: Sasha Bruce Youthwork

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For troubled young people, separation from family and home is the ultimate crisis. It disrupts their schoolwork, their family and social relationships, and all of the growing up they need to do so. But even young people and families facing homelessness or other major challenges can shape stable, happy lives. Since 1974, they have been doing so with the help of Sasha Bruce Youthwork (SBY), one of the area’s largest organizations helping at-risk youth and their families.  

Along with a broad array of services that help youths, SBY provides shelter to young people whose living arrangements have broken down. SBY’s outreach programs serve thousands of young people and their families, and its residential programs house about 500 people annually. 

The organization’s mission is to “support and empower young people and to strengthen families,” according to Elizabeth Workman, SBY’s director of home-based counseling and support services. To do this, SBY works to promote school enrollment to reunite youngsters with their families, find them other living arrangements, or prepare them to live on their own. 

The organization’s programs include crisis intervention, counseling, life skills training, case management, tutoring and workplace training. And SBY’s residential services range from housing for young mothers to housing for children in the juvenile justice system. There is also the Sash Bruce House on Maryland Avenue in Northeast, which offers emergency shelter 24 hours a day. 

Additionally, SBY gives presentations in schools, shelters, and elsewhere on the importance of education and families. And in 2001 the organization launched a charter school, which now has nearly 200 students and will grow to include a high school. 

All of the programs involve a “Strength-based” approach, which Workman said encouraged clients to identify their own strengths and potential for change and to focus less on their past than on what they can do in the future. 

“It’s about them, not about us,” she said. 

Workman said that youths who come to SBY are usually referred by a city or private agency, but that many are sent by a teacher or relative or approach the organization on their own. And many of these children have experienced abuse and neglect or are in trouble with the law. Sometimes SBY is their last resort before the care or custody of a city agency or life on the street. 

Participation in more than one program is common, said Associate Director Vera Johnson, who said that SBY can help clients address many of the interlocking challenges they commonly face, and that this provides flexibility that single-issue programs may lack. 

SBY started in the 1970s with Executive Director Deborah Shore’s work with runaways and street kids. She is still with SBY and Johnson has been there since 1977. Their commitment is mirrored by that of longtime employees and volunteers, and by former clients who come back to help SBY to refer a young person or to just let the employees at the organization know that they are making it. 

Johnson said that the greatest reward is when former clients report that they have earned a college degree or achieved other accomplishments. “I know our agency has been successful,” she said. 

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