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08/21/2019 08:15 AMFor many people, “young adult” can be a difficult thing to be, stuck between childhood and adulthood and making continual adjustments: from high school to whatever comes next, from college to whatever comes next, from an institution of learning to a new job, from home to a first apartment—even returning home after living away.
This summer, Old Saybrook’s Youth & Family Services (YFS) piloted a new program, Young Adult Drop In. Held for an hour for seven Tuesday afternoons stretching from June to August, the program was created to fill a need the department had identified in the community.
The age group the program targeted, 14 through 24, is “transitioning from kid to adult,” said Chelsea Graham, a licensed social worker who facilitated the group. “There is this limbo that is occurring with young people today. [YFS is] trying to figure out programs to meet the needs for that kind of in-between” age bracket.
Graham said she believes that the gap between childhood and adulthood is wider now than it was in the past.
“It’s always been there,” she said, but “it’s got wider ages that fall into it. You’re 20 and you might want to be an adult or you might not [want that] at all, depending on your family. [Your life] might just be like your senior year of high school or it might be completely different and you’re not really ready for it. Or you might have a curfew and your parents are still making your lunch...Young people are at home for longer.”
The program was “one time a week where young people in various stages of their transition to adulthood can come and connect socially and also discuss how they’re navigating these transitions, the strategies that got them through it,” Graham said.
Older members of the group were able to mentor younger ones by sharing these strategies, she said.
Some participants of the group, she said, have taken paths other than the two that have long been viewed as traditional: going to college immediately after high school or finding a job.
“The variety provides a richness to the group and support for other young people who may not do one of the two traditional routes after high school,” Graham said.
There are also “quite a few young people who will go away for a semester or a year and decide for whatever reason that it’s more beneficial to come home and do a community college route, different from their initial plan,” she explained. Without the social connections they had at college, “there’s a lot of isolation happening.”
It’s difficult, she said, when young people don’t have the ice breakers that are just infused in the education system through a commonality of the class or homework or having lunch at the same time every day.
“When these younger people go into various pools within the workplace, they’re not making friendships,” or finding people they can socialize with outside of work, she said. “Many [of their co-workers] already have their lives and their family.”
The purpose of the group was not simply to fill a need for social connections, but to provide an opportunity to work through those feelings of isolation and uncertainty, as well as to allow participants to share their experiences with others.
To attract young people to the new group, Graham made a simple flyer with basic information and distributed it around town. She also used Constant Contact, an email marketing program, and the YFS’ community email list to get out information to the relevant demographic.
“I contacted other places where young adults go: coffee shops, the library—which is a heavily used area for young people—[and] the high school,” she said.
What the flyer didn’t say was that the sessions were designed to be therapeutic.
“It resembles therapy in regard to how the rapport is built,” Graham said. “There is a strong connection between the facilitator and participants and there’s therapeutic elements throughout it: how we’re processing, how we’re engaging, how everyone is involved.”
While the participants largely directed the topics of discussion, Graham discouraged them from carrying on two conversations at once and gently urged them to share their thoughts with everyone.
The format “resembles the concept of group therapy but also group cohesion,” she said. “It pretty much resembles a support group. But it’s for anyone. It doesn’t have to be for someone who’s actively in therapeutic service, but it can be.”
Fifty-one people between the ages of 16 and 20 or 21 turned up over the course of the program, with attendees at each session ranging from 7 to 10, Graham said. The participants enjoyed the sessions enough to ask for additional social time, so Graham arranged for space outside the YFS building one evening to create a kind of drive-in movie. The group members chose the film and decided on what each would bring for a pot-luck dinner.
“What’s missing for this young adult population is they were so used to having recreational activities or group activities developed by the schools,” Graham said. “Now they don’t have that. They don’t have someone supporting them, making that next connection.”
For their last meeting, the group chose to have a Monopoly game night, which Graham described as having a lot of “therapeutic reframes.”
“When you’re playing Monopoly,” she explained, “you might just be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m the worst at this. I don’t have any real estate.’ There’s a dialogue that happens around that” to support and encourage the player who is doubting their abilities.
Graham, the therapist, or her intern, a master’s student in social work, try to shift the focus to the things the player does well. Other players then jump with their own encouragement.
“To be honest, I couldn’t hear anything from all the laughter,” Graham said. “They would have played for two hours more but I was like, ‘It’s 9 o’clock. You’ve played for three hours. We’ve got to go.’”
YFS is discussing whether, how, and when to form a similar young adult program in the fall.