Turning It Around: Redirectional Therapy

Initially created in 1985 by a federal grant to the University of Hawaii School of Social Work, the group now known as Adult Friends for Youth (AFY) has grown from a volunteer mentoring program into a private nonprofit corporation that sends trained professionals into low-income neighborhoods in Hawaii to work directly with gang members. In this valuable book, AFY founder and president emeritus Rosen and president and CEO Spencer-Chun describe the organization%E2%80%99s signature redirectional therapy, which they credit with helping dangerous youths lead productive lives. The authors support their claims with numerous case studies that demonstrate of the successful work being done by AFY. Particularly useful is a section on conducting successful mediation between gangs and teaching gang members how to solve their differences nonviolently. While this effort lacks the immediacy of Gruwell%E2%80%99s catalyzing The Freedom Writers Diary, which tells of the author%E2%80%99s experiences with high school students in Long Beach, Calif., the stories collected by Rosen and Spencer-Chun attest to the power of respectful, therapeutic intervention to rehabilitate a population that has been stigmatized by educators, mental health professionals, and the legal system as hopeless.