Out-Of-Home Support Program

Responding to a Pennsylvania Attorney General’s 1975 ruling banning youth from incarceration with adults at Camp Hill Correctional Facility, Thomas Jeffers launched the Youth Advocate Program Inc. (YAP) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
In the early days, YAP’s mission was to offer community-based alternatives to institutionalization, incarceration and other out-of-home placements. They did not operate any out-of-home care programs such as shelters, foster homes and residential facilities. Over the years, attempting to stay current with the trends in the juvenile and criminal justice system, YAP expanded its model to offer services to a broader population by developing 125 programs in 18 locations across the nation, including Washington D.C. Today YAP has become a national and international leader committed to keeping young people and families together. Their goal is to address the

Programs inspired by YAP are currently operating in many states including: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, to enhance juvenile justice and child welfare systems. In January 2010, YAP founded YAP Life Coaches Project (LCP) in New York to serve adults leaving prison. This newly developed program targets adult men parolees in upstate Wayne and Monroe Counties, including the city of Rochester, to provide a broad range of services including: transportation, school enrollment, medical support, employment, housing, help with obtaining drivers licenses and more. These services are designed to assist parolees with the basic resources needed for individuals to become active, productive, law-abiding members of their