The best books that push me to challenge the status quo and develop a practice framework for working with youth

This is a compassionate look at addictions, covering neuroscience and how peoples’ lack of attachments can set them up for life-long struggles. The rationale for an anti-oppressive harm reduction approach helps build relationships, expand our understanding of addictions, and reduce the shame and guilt that come with trauma.

This book did more to push me to think about my practice and start truly understanding how trauma impacts the brain and how meaningful relationships can act to soothe people who are isolated, lonely, and disconnected.

For many people struggling in their lives, their template of the world is that people cannot be trusted. This is profoundly sad, so Maté offers insight into seeing the parts of the world we don’t even want to acknowledge in a different way. This offers hope.

This is an amazing book and, after many years, continues to make its rounds among my colleagues and other social workers who are working with youth. They appreciate having read it, and it really helps workers think deeply about what trauma-informed ways of working actually mean.

The book helps clarify how people cope with trauma and how such behaviours are more to do with fear, coping, and trying to make sense of an unsafe world. This book is full of powerful comments and quotes that will stick with you. People with trauma do not act out due to being morally misguided but due to how their brains have been wired through trauma that can start in utero.

What you learn by reading this book is how ineffective punishment interventions are and what people need is relationships. If living with trauma, not only is mental health a challenge, but it can come with a host of physical illnesses and a shorter lifespan. This is even evident when working with youth. We can do better.

This is an important book for anyone working with children and youth. High-risk youth do not just appear; they have had very difficult and traumatic experiences starting at a very young age.

The stories shared in this book are powerful and help illustrate how the brain works for children growing up in, or experiencing, toxic environments. This will help social workers, psychologists, youth workers, outreach workers, foster and adoptive parents, teachers, police, childcare workers, and coaches to understand and make sense of what is going on for these children. It can help to not take things personally when children and youth are exhibiting negative attachment behaviours, they are pushing away, and even when they are lashing out. Letting people into their world takes a significant risk as they risk further rejection and abandonment.

However, Perry and Szalavitz outline the importance of relationships, lots of them. This can help mitigate some of the harm done and help create new neural pathways in the brain. Perry discusses the Neurosequential Model for mapping the brain and providing treatment and speaks to the need to pull children in for love and healing rather than pushing them away to teach them a lesson. This is as relevant for youth as it is for children. 

This is an excellent book on the social-ecological perspective and helping youth “navigate and negotiate the resources they need for their well-being.” Through his many books, Ungar challenges the traditional view of resiliency and something inherent in some people to overcome adversity. We can all have a role in helping build resiliency in youth.

This book helps you understand how to help youth feel empowered and competent, create a positive identity, and learn skills to best get their needs met in constructive and positively reinforcing ways. For workers who think that handholding is enabling, they will learn that spending time with our youth and developing navigation and negotiating skills is fundamentally important and something all youth need, not just youth whose lives have been an ongoing struggle.

Ungar has tabbed guides that can be printed and used to help learn 20 navigation and negotiating skills and to help workers develop their strength-based practice.

I was fortunate to be involved with this book project (and write the foreword) with a number of very passionate people committed to supporting youth and giving them a voice.

The youth courageously wrote their stories so readers can learn from them, especially workers who are involved with providing support and helping youth. The youth share their experiences of growing up in the child welfare system, the good, the bad, and the ugly. They talk about what they learned and what they would like to see change and provide words of wisdom that can be valuable for workers to think about and reflect upon.

The stories demonstrate that youth want connections with healthy adults, but they are also a call to action for workers to get to know their youth, understand them, be genuine, and not judge them for circumstances beyond their control. This is a very heartfelt collection of life stories but also a valuable learning tool.