Few formal post-secondary educational programs in the United States focus on youth work, thus youth workers often enter the field with diverse backgrounds and varying levels of experience working with youth. Drawing on mounting evidence that quality youth service requires skilled staff, professional-development opportunities have received…

In West Africa, advisory services for family farms have been promoted to better address producers' needs. The paper aims to show that these services can be understood as a system whose functioning is strongly determined by the financing mechanisms, the governance mechanisms put in place, the quality of human resources delivering advice, and the…

Much has been made of the advantages of active support and person-centred planning, both of which have gradually been evolving and changing over the last 25-30 years. The latter is now mandated in the UK as part of the "Valuing People" strategy on disability (Department of Health UK, 2001), and is also central to the follow-up policy…

This paper summarizes a diverse body of literature on Achievement Place, a community-based program for juveniles in group home settings. The program's Teaching-Family treatment model is described in detail as a base for presenting findings about its ability to change behaviors. Preliminary data from follow-up studies of attempts to extend the…

As mentoring programs have proliferated, considerable variation in approaches to programmatic mentoring has emerged. Concomitant confusion exists about the context, structure, and goals that constitute mentoring as a distinct intervention. This article presents a brief summary of what is currently known about different approaches to mentoring and…