Youth Empowerment Services Plus (Y.E.S. Plus)

The Youth Empowerment Services Plus (Y.E.S. Plus) project seeks to provide comprehensive services for 1,250 (750 youth per year funded) children and youth age 5-18 in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Reducing delinquency and youth violence is a primary goal of this initiative, and will provide opportunities for participants to develop their full potential for physical, social, emotional and cognitive health. The Y.E.S Plus Project includes after school and evening programs for children and youth, adolescent prevention programming including gender specific services and case management and counseling services. The project will also provide character, values and leadership development, literacy education, education, arts, physical fitness, career exploration, case management and counseling, violence and teen pregnancy prevention, crisis intervention, summer programming.

This project will track the number and percent of children that report positive goals for the future and their ability to handle life crisis during the program. The data will be collected from several internal and other local sources, (e.g., Brigham Center program records, counseling logs, school and referral agency records, pre-and post-test instruments, parental reports, participants' academic report cards, and past participant surveys). The evaluation results will be used to adapt individual treatment plans and to improve program design and implementation. NCA/NCF