All Individuals Deserve Support: Collaborating To Prevent HIV/AIDS among Homeless Youth.

All Individuals Deserve Support (AIDS) is a collaborative prevention program between graduate students in a Community/Agency Counseling program and the Children's Home Homeless Youth Program in Peoria, Illinois. Graduate students developed a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention program for homeless youth as a class project. Project design involved: assessing the needs of the target population; developing prevention activities; implementing the program; and evaluating the program. Students worked in cooperative groups throughout the program. They collected information of such programs via the Internet and more traditional sources. Guest speakers addressed the class on the topic of interest. Students developed interview questions and interviewed the case managers who worked most closely with the homeless youth. The interviews indicated that case managers were very concerned about their clients' unprotected sexual activity and attitudes toward casual sex. Case managers noted that the most effective types of programs were highly interactive and had meaning for daily living challenges. Students implemented the program with clients from the Homeless Youth Program. To support the case managers, students developed a resource library, conducted inservice training for direct service providers, and offered a psychoeducational group for clients on self-esteem and assertiveness. Each aspect of the program was evaluated via activity logs, portfolios, and participant feedback. Both case managers and clients considered the program very good and very helpful. (SM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** All Individuals Deserve Support: Collaborating to Prevent HIV/AIDS Among Homeless Youth Nancy E. Sherman College of Education & Health Sciences Bradley University American Association of Colleges For Teacher Education Garnering Support for Change: Preparing Educators to Prevent HIV/AIDS June 24-25, 1998 Honolulu, Hawaii PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS \4\Z BEEN GRANTED BY iii_54(01?A4s) sisc. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 2 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 0 This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction Quality. Points of view or opinions state() in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. All Individuals Deserve Support: Collaborating to Prevent HIV/AIDS Among Homeless Youth HIV/AIDS Prevention among homeless youth presents additional challenges for counselors and educators. All Individuals Deserve Support (AIDS) is a collaborative prevention program between graduate students in Community/Agency Counseling and The Children's Home, Homeless Youth Program. Twenty graduate students participated in developing a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention program for homeless youth as a class project in a course titled Community Counseling. The goals for the course include providing students with the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for effective community counseling of which a major focus is prevention. This project met those goals in several ways: (a) students worked cooperatively as a team to plan, develop, and implement a prevention program; (b) students acquired first hand knowledge of community resources available and how to access those resources, and (c) students learned the process for developing community/agency based prevention programs from the initial stage of assessment to the final evaluation. Introduction Preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS among the population has been the focus of much research and program development in the last two decades. Although many groups of people at higher risk for the transmission of I-UV/AIDS have shown a decline in the number of new cases reported, the number of new cases reported among youth is on the rise. Of those youth most vulnerable to infection are those prone to high risk behavior due to homelessness. Homeless youth engage in higher rates of high risk behavior such as unprotected sex and drug abuse due to