Positive Peer Culture is an indispensable asset to all those committed to helping young people reach their full potential as individuals and members of their communities. Vorranth's and Brendtro's writing is the result of a fruitful dialectic of theory and praxis; Positive Peer Culture is a model for youth treatment and empowerment grounded in effective practice. I know of no other approach that so effectively challenges young people to assume the task of caring, helping, changing, and living responsibly (and I've experiences several approaches).

The authors include the vital information necessary for both youth workers and adolescents to effectively implement Positive Peer Culture in residential and school-based programs. This volume also contains insights gained from the practice of Positive Peer Culture not available in the first edition, including discussion of common mistakes staff make during the implementation process and a chapter on evaluating programs based on PPC.

I have seen PPC empower many young people to live responsible and meaningful lives-young people who where labeled hopeless and unreachable. I first read the volume, "Positive Peer Culture," at age thirteen while attending a PPC based residential treatment program. At age twenty-three, I find the authors' concepts and methods as inspiring and compelling as when I first discovered them; they are set forth in simple and straightforward terms easily understood by professionals, laymen and youth alike.

Although PPC has been used primarily to empower adolescent offenders, the ideas in this book, if applied, are helpful for working with young people from a variety of backgrounds in a variety of settings-from community based programs, to public schools, to juvenile detention facalities. In addition to professional youth workers, teachers, ministers, parents, and youth themselves can benefit greatly from reading "Positive Peer Culture."

People who believed in empowering young people asked me to read this book and practice the principles it sets forth so that I might understand the power of caring. If you care about kids, I hope you will buy and read this book so that you may be better equipped to empower them to become the great men and women they have the potential to be.

Positive Peer Culture is an excellent resource for youth workers working with young offenders in a residential custody setting. Ten years of using the principals, which are so clearly explained in the manual, to create a climate of caring and trust with young offenders, has convinced me that Brendtro and Vorrath have got it right. There is no better system of behaviour management and cognitive restucturing in existence that I know of!

This book is the foundation for Positive Peer Culture; a very powerful treatment approach that mobilizes the natural and dynamic potential of adolescent peer groups. Working with delinquent and emotially disturbed youth in residential treatment for over 25 years I have found this to be an outstanding process for staff and youth alike and have utilzed it as our primary treatment approach at the Connecticut Junior Republic.

This is a classic text for child and youth care proffessionals. The book provides both the new and established milieu staff with the skills needed to provide a healthy and productive "other 23 hours outside the therapy meeting." This book should be required reading for all people who work with children. The central theme is to provide a milieu (an enviorment rich in theraputic exchanges) that meet the developmental needs of troubled children. Every chapter proivdes practical activities and methods. This is the type of book you need to read every year to refresh your mission. Every time you read this book, you will learn a new "gem." It is the best book ever written about the management of troubled child.

This book reawakens our resolve to welcome all young people in to our shared circle of courage through understanding how spirituality is an essential part of their lives.

The authors skillfully craft a powerful message of hope, reclamination, and victory for anyone who cares about young people by blending real-life stories, with practical solutions based up biblical wisdom and the wisdom of historial figures in the youth development field.

This must read book will fill your heart with hope, fill your mind with new and fresh ideas and start you on a journey of discovery that will reward you and all young people in your life. This is an especially important book for teachers, coaches, juvenile home workers and foster care parents.

This is a must buy!

This book is wonderful in guiding teachers and administrators in developing an atmosphere that promotes the positive development of all children. After a large section devoted to describing the wrong-doings of Americans and the decay of our value system (at times a little extreme,) the latter part of the book gives great strategies for the development of positive classroom management and a "reclaiming environment." Worth a read.

As Education Director at an alternative high school for American Indian students, I find this book a valuable and useable resource. In a succinct fashion, the authors lay out a philosphy for creating school environments that reclaim students at risk. The Reclaiming model integrates traditional Native American aproaches to discipline and child development. The book does a nice job of explaining and illustrating each of its principles. The book offers an intuitive and very old model as well as a rationale for implementing it. For its accessibility and ideas, Reclaiming Youth At Risk should be read by everyone working with young adults.