Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice

Introduced by the Search Institute in 1990, the framework of "developmental assets" is a set of social and psychological strengths that function to enhance health outcomes for children and adolescents. Since that time, research and application associated with the concept of developmental assets has been integrated with the fields of community change and community building: -to help understand the developmental experiences, resources, and opportunities that contributes to important health outcomes among young people; and -to energize and guide community-based approaches to strengthen the natural and inherent socialization capacity of communities in support of youth. Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities examines the relationships of developmental assets to other approaches and bodies of work. It raises challenges about the asset-building approach and offers recommendations for how this approach can be strengthened and broadened in impact and research. In doing so, this book extends the scholarly base for the understanding of the character and scope of the systemic relation between young people's healthy development and the nature of developmentally attentive communities. The chapters in this volume present evidence that asset-building communities both promote and are promoted by positive youth development, a bi-directional, systemic linkage that - consistent with developmental systems theory - further civil society by building relationship and intergenerational places within a community that are united in attending to the developmental needs of children and adolescents. This book is a valuable resource for developmental psychologists, child psychologists, school and community psychologists, practitioners, administrators and policy-makers.