Safety Net for Youth

It has been awhile since I posted, in large part because I have been assisting at our agency with a grant directed at engaging youth through non-residential means.  This got me started thinking about the changing face of social services and more specifically how youth shelters are providing programming that does more than simply providing shelter.

 As an agency we are engaging a fairly diverse cross-section of 12-23 year olds in our community through several distinct programs.

Shelter House:

• We currently serve 12 - 17(&364 days) in a 24 bed shelter.  youth and families are provided case management services leading to service referrals, service coordination, Family Team Meetings, etc….  Last year the 792 youth we served stayed on average 6 days.  This is our oldest program but it continues to change with the times.  Last year less than 15% of our residents were state contracted placements.  The vast majority of our youth that we serve are walk-in or Project Safe Place youth.

Y-NOW

• Is the mentoring component of our agency.  While this program has worked through numerous funding streams with different populations historically, they currently serve middles school aged youth with one(or more) parents currently incarcerated.  The program matches youth with mentors for a one year commitment.

Outreach

• Deals with raising community awareness of Safe Place.  It is similar to what other Safe Place coordinators do nation wide.
• Street Out reach works with young adults in the street.  Case management is provided as well as referrals to housing.  We currently have limited immediate housing for youth in need as well as agreements with area adult shelters to assist our youth.

Field Release

• When Youth in Louisville commit a non-detainable offense they are brought to our agency, a needs assessment is completed.  When the youth’s guardian comes to Shelter to pick them up mediation, appropriate referrals, and Shelter are offered.  Since this program began in in August of 2005 we have served 1046 youth through this program.

I mention these programs because I would like to share what we are doing locally.  More importantly I would love to hear about the other programs being offered by agencies around the country.  I know that we are all facing different demographics and regional issues, but I feel like there is much to be learned through the sharing of information…

Are you aware that more than 1.5 million teenagers run away in the United States every year? This is an alarming number, and it is our duty as youth service professionals, parents and concerned adults to not only assist those teens in crisis, but also to educate the public about the magnitude of the RHY population.

The best thing we can do for those teens is to ensure that they are educated on the services available to them, as well as the dangers of running away. There are many programs, Safe Place included, that are dedicated to outreach and education to our children and teens. In our Safe Place outreach, we also discuss topics such as abuse, healthy relationships and conflict resolution.

I’m also excited to see the growth of using technology in youth outreach. Through texting, the internet, and specifically social networking, (see Bill’s April 3 post) agencies are meeting children where they are to offer resources and support.

Parents need to be aware of and prepared to face this issue. They need to be trained to look for warning signs from their teens (separate from “normal teen turmoil”), and know what to do if their teen runs away. Runawayteens.org suggests warning signs such as sleep changes, personality changes, school problems and withdrawl from family and friends. The site emphasizes trusting your “gut” when you feel that something may be wrong with your teen. Adults also need to be made aware of local resources and encouraged to use them when necessary.

Please share your thoughts. What does your agency do to expand RHY knowledge in your community? What resources do you have to share with other agencies, teens or parents?

The Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act is up for Reauthorization again and while this 34 year old Act has served us well, the appropriation remains woefully inadequate to meet even a fraction of the need. Programs must put a patchwork of grants and contracts together to fund just the basic services. This patchwork often results in conflicting requirements around age, length of stay, and more.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was one statute and set of regulations that could be applied to all RHY services….

In June 2008 the American Bar Association and the National Network for Youth will be joining forces to develop model laws in myriad areas that affect homeless youth. One model to be developed is State RHY statutes.

I want to know what you have to say about what should be in a model law.

• Should there be separate legislation for runaway youth and homeless youth - in other words two laws instead of one?
• What is the ideal length of stay for crisis? For transitional?
• Should confidentiality have limits? If so, what should those exceptions be?
• What rights should parents have? The right to be informed, or the larger right to consent?
• What are the ages of the youth who need services? Is cutting off the age at 21 still good enough?
• Should states insolate programs from liability as long as the program is in compliance with appropriate regulations?
• What else should be in a model law?

We all will be looking at hard times in the very near future. (Harder still than the times we are in.) The Federal Government is broke and States are struggling with huge deficits. Now may be the best time to put together a strong set of statutes that will protect the young people, families and communities that are traditionally the hardest hit when the budget ax falls.

The Associated Press profiles the National Runaway Switchboard and the gaps in available to youth looking to flee troubled situations.  AP writer Martha Irvine does an excellent job reporting in talking with both national leaders (NRS, National Network 4 Youth and National Safe Place) as well as local practitioners and former Safe Place youth Rusty Booker.  The story is both linked and run in its entirety below:

Life on the Streets Get Tougher
By Martha Irvine, Associated Press
04/07/08 

CHICAGO (AP) - The young caller’s voice is high-pitched and trembling.

Her mother’s been drinking, she says. They got into a fistfight, so the girl grabbed her backpack and a cell phone and bolted, with little thought about where a 13-year-old could go on a cold night.

Hiding in an alley off her rural hometown’s deserted main street, she calls the only phone number she can think of: 1-800-RUNAWAY.

“I just don’t feel like I’m taken care of like a daughter should be,” the girl tells the volunteer who answers the phone at the National Runaway Switchboard. She stutters between sobs and shivers.

Her story is a common one at the Chicago-based hot line, which handles well over 100,000 calls each year, many from troubled young people who are dealing with increasingly difficult issues.

National Runaway Switchboard data provided exclusively to The Associated Press shows that the overall number of young callers facing crises that jeopardized their safety rose from 13,650 in 2000 to 15,857 last year. About two-thirds of the latter figure were young people who were thinking of running away, had already done so or had been thrown out of the house.

Federally funded since the 1970s, the National Runaway Switchboard is regarded by people who work with troubled youth as an organization that provides one of the best overviews of the shadowy world of teenage runaways, which is difficult to track.

The group’s statistics showed that callers are getting younger and that 6,884 crisis callers last year said they had been abused or neglected, compared with 3,860 in 2000. That is a 78 percent increase.

Some callers just want someone to talk to, about problems at home or with friends. Others who have already run away use the hot line to exchange messages with their families - to let them know they’re OK, or to arrange a free bus ticket home.

Some are desperate for a place to stay, for safety, for options.

“I’m scared of my parents, and I don’t want to go back there. Please don’t make me!” pleaded the 13-year-old girl who called this particular night.

The information she gave the hot line checked out. However, her name and other identifying details could not be included for this story because the National Runaway Switchboard guarantees callers confidentiality.

It also quickly became apparent to volunteer Megan McCormick - who has been trained to spot the occasional crank call - that this girl’s fear was real.

“I know it must be really scary,” said McCormick, a graduate student in social work at the University of Chicago. As they spoke, she checked the call center’s extensive computer database for shelters in the girl’s hometown.

The closest was in a larger city, 40 minutes away. But when McCormick called, she was told they didn’t take anyone younger than 14.

Such scenarios are common in many regions of the country, particularly rural areas where resources for runaways are scarce. Further complicating the matter, the Runaway Switchboard has found that more crisis callers than ever are 14 and younger - 1,255 in that age group in 2000, compared with 1,844 last year.

“The reality is, there are not always services available for kids who are calling,” says Maureen Blaha, executive director of the National Runaway Switchboard, which began as a Chicago area crisis hot line in 1971 and went national three years later. “We try to be as creative as we can be to find solutions. But there isn’t always a simple answer.”

Others in the youth services field concur.

They note that while the number of shelters and other organizations that help runaways have slowly increased over the decades, they have been unable to keep pace with the demand. Many institutions also lack the resources to deal with the severity of issues young people face today.

“The population is much more disturbed than the runaways who were being seen 20 or 30 years ago,” says Victoria Wagner, chief executive of the National Network for Youth, a coalition of agencies that serve troubled young people. “There are more mental health issues, more substance abuse, more coming from violent home situations.”

Long-standing government support for the Runaway Switchboard has been a vital component in addressing the problem, Wagner says. But, she adds, federal dollars for shelters and other services, also through the Runaway Youth Act, have remained largely stagnant since it first passed in the 1970s. So she and others are pressing Congress for more.

It’s a tough sell in trying economic times. But the irony, Wagner says, is that when people are unemployed and families are struggling, young people are even more likely to have reason to run.

The 13-year-old girl who has called the Runaway Switchboard sounds even more anguished when McCormick tells there are no shelters in her area that will take her.

“So there’s nowhere I can go?” she says in disbelief.

Several times McCormick asks about other options, but the girl says she has none.

She says her friends’ parents would only take her back home. Relatives, whom she rarely sees, live out of state. And she seems even more afraid of her father than her mom, claiming that her parents divorced because he was abusive.

Even so, she has little doubt that one or both of her parents will soon be out looking for her.

That’s not the case for many other runaways, who are thrown out of home for anything from being gay to exhibiting aggressive behavior.

“Ninety-eight percent of the time, it’s the parents saying, `No, take them.’ They’re the throwaway kids,” says Bill Hogan, program manager at the Haven W. Poe Runaway Shelter in Tampa, Fla. He recently reunited a 10-year-old boy with his grandmother, who had told police to keep him.

Neglect also has changed the face of the runaway, says Kathleen Boutin, executive director of the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, which is getting more requests for help from children of methamphetamine addicts.

For those 12 to 18, Nevada now has a “Right to Shelter” law, which allows organizations to provide emergency housing, food and clothing without parental consent.

Indiana is another state that recently passed a comprehensive law for homeless youth with a similar provision, but limited the age to 16 and older.

“It’s a beginning,” says Cynthia Smith, executive director of the Youth Service Bureau in Evansville, Ind. Right now, her area has no youth shelter - but she hopes the new law will help change that.

In New York, however, a bill requiring safe-houses and other services for sexually exploited youth stalled in January. And in Wyoming, runaways often still spend the night in jail.

It’s a mind-set that Rusty Booker, an 18-year-old former runaway from Louisville, Ky., hopes will change.

Last year, he told members of Congress how, at age 12, he ran away from an abusive home. He got help at a library affiliated with National Safe Place, an organization with more than 16,000 locations nationally where young people are put in touch with local crisis workers.

Still, many communities that want to establish Safe Places are turned down because they have few or no services to offer runaways.

Nine states have no Safe Places at all. That includes the home of the 13-year-old girl who was on the line with the Runaway Switchboard for more than an hour.

Several times, she adamantly refused to call the local sheriff or to get child protective services involved.

“All this stuff that’s going on, it’s just really overwhelming,” she told McCormick, the call center volunteer. “I don’t want my mom to go to jail. I can’t do that to my family.”

Eventually, though, she changed her mind. She asked McCormick to stay on the line while she spoke with a county social worker and then the sheriff.

“I’ve kind of run away from home,” the girl told the sheriff’s dispatch operator. “I need somewhere to stay.”

McCormick waited on the line until a sheriff’s deputy found her and picked her up. Finally, the girl was safe and members of the Runaway Switchboard staff looked relieved.

“You get used to some aspects of this,” says Cori Ballew, a Runaway Switchboard supervisor who oversaw the call. “But you never get used to some of it, especially when it ends with no resolution.”

Some runaways, like this one, find help of some kind, she says.

Others, faced with few choices, hang up.

This week is spring break here in Louisville and we have been lucky enough to be able to expose our kids to some opportunities they otherwise may not be able to enjoy.. Probably the most significant of these being the Ali Center here in Louisville.  In preparation for the trip we have been talking to the kids about topics such as resilience, hope, determination, individuality, tolerance, & success.  Just wanted to share a poem many of you have probably read before that we use a lot with the kids.  For those who have been to the Ali Center you know it was important to Ali also.  It is a poem that became a mantra for him in his life.  I hope that it will have the same inspiration for our youth also…..

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!” If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Last night while you were home in your bed over 3,800 young people were homeless in New York City. Over 1,600 of those young people spent the night outside, in an abandoned building, at a transportation site or in a car, bus, train or some other vehicle and 150 of our children spent the night with a sex work client. We know because we asked.

Do you know how many homeless young people there are in your community?

I work on behalf of homeless youth in New York and even I am stunned by our failure to recognize the number of young people who are homeless each and every day. In July of 2007 Empire State Coalition surveyed over 1,000 youth who were either homeless or at-risk for homelessness. The surveys were done at youth programs, at runaway shelters and transitional living programs, at adult homeless programs, on the street, and at other miscellaneous sites.What we found was that there are some populations of youth that are grossly overrepresented in the homeless youth populations. These groups include: gay, lesbian and bisexual youth; youth who are transgender; minority youth; youth with some history of foster care; and youth who have been through either the juvenile justice or criminal justice systems.

The vast majority of the youth we interviewed were undereducated and unprepared for self sufficiency. A full 50% did not have a High School diploma or an equivalency. And while an additional 23% stated they were in school or a GED program, it is unknown how many of those will be able to complete even that minimal education. Youth who are connected to a program specifically designed for homeless youth are much better able to access needed supports and services, sadly, less than one-quarter of the youth surveyed utilized these services.The average age of the youth we interviewed was 20.

The average age of when these youth first left home was 16. Almost all of the youth we met struggled in and out of homelessness for that entire four years. We learned that we do a really poor job of identifying the younger population before they become street-involved. Some of that is because the younger population are still able to “couch surf” and therefore hard to find - but no one is asking 14, 15, 16 or 17 year olds where they are spending their nights.

The lessons learned from this project must not be ignored. We need to do a much better job locating and working with youth when they first become homeless. We need to examine why certain populations are overrepresented in the population and develop responses. For examples, churches, schools and communities must work together to insure that youth who are gay, lesbian or bi-sexual are not been forced to flee from abuse and harassment and that these youth have safe and supportive places to socialize. The same is true for youth who are transgender. We need to support families in their communities so that a crisis does not lead to a young person becoming homeless. We need to educate and support employers so that they will be able to hire homeless youth and work with them through their period of transition. Finally, we need permanent housing that is appropriate for adolescents and that includes supportive services that include education, employment and social skills that will help them succeed in the future.

Is you community doing a better job at identifying and serving homeless youth? Please share your experience so we may all learn.

It should come as no surprise that as technology continues to evolve that it was only a matter of time until social networking became the new form of outreach for working with RHYA youth. I just wanted to post some initial observations and ask some questions of those who have been outreaching on the net for longer than we have here in Louisville.

Initially when we started to look at the opportunities presented by My Space, Facebook, etc.. many questioned how many of the youth we serve actually have social networking accounts. I can not speak for everywhere, but the answer with our youth was almost all have a My Space and quite a few have Facebook. Locally the majority of our youth access there sites by circumventing fire walls at school and accessing the sites through proxies or by simply going to the library to access their accounts. I would imagine this is the case in more areas than not.

With the knowledge that the vast majority of our youth have accounts and access them regularly, we set forth with the best way to use this constantly evolving medium to the benefit of our agency and much more importantly the youth and families we serve. In addition to allowing youth ways to contact us at their leisure in a confidential way, we are also able to get information out quickly, freely, and in bulk. In other words we can reach more youth with significantly less effort quickly and efficiently.

While our pages are still in the very early stages of development they have already shown promise of fulfilling their purpose. We have now started to ask youth for their email address at intake and are sending them friend requests shortly after discharge as a way for them to stay informed about what is going on at our Shelter and as another way for them to access resources if necessary.

I would be interested in hearing from other agencies about how they have used their pages and what their thoughts are about their effectiveness. I am excited about the opportunities that social networking will have in allowing each of our agencies to inform the public at large and to maintain an open door to the youth we have served…

As always… Keep up the good fight and many blessings for the important work that each of you do….

Here is an example of YMCA Safe Place Services Shelter House’s My Space page….

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=361997946&MyToken=1691274c-c61e-4fa5-b258-2ddea547289f

Here is National Safe Places My Space page with links to other programs accross the country

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=196609327

Finally our agency also allows Facebook users to become a fan and keep up with our efforts locally. (Feel free to become a fan )

http://www.facebook.com/pages/YMCA-Safe-Place-Services/9172910679

Not much shocks me, but the news about New York’s now former Governor, Eliot Spitzer, left me speechless.

It’s not about the sex. New York’s brand new Governor, David Paterson, has already admitted to a series of affairs. It is about a betrayal of trust - the trust inherent in an elected official’s obligation to protect all the people - especially the most vulnerable among us.

There are many who see the Eliot Spitzer scandal and just another sex scandal. In fact the University of Chicago Law School’s distinguished professor, Martha Nussbaum quoted in the current issue of The New Yorker states “[a] man who did what Spitzer did would have a lot to discuss with his wife and family [but] … it would be laughable to accuse him of a betrayal of the public trust.”

Exactly what ‘public’ is she talking about? The public comprised of latte sipping law professors. Certainly not the public comprised of young people who, like the young woman in this case, find themselves homeless at age 17.

Prostitution is not a victimless crime. Most young people involved in the commercial sex industry have long histories of abuse. Eliot Spitzer knows this. Eliot Spitzer signed into law New York’s first and only legislation protecting victims of human trafficking by going after traffickers and johns. New York’s laws include domestic and international victims of trafficking. Eliot Spitzer signed the law because he understood the nature of the problem and how young people get caught in the web or traffickers, including pimps and high end “escort services”.

Every one of our young people, runaway, homeless, street-involved, vulnerable, has been betrayed by the Mr. Spitzer and those who continue to see no wrong in what he did.

The California Research Bureau has published a survey titled “Voices from the Street: A Survey of Homeless Youth by Their Peers.” [California Research Bureau]

The Indiana state legislature has passed a bill that eases regulations for youth to utilize shelters and requires the state to conduct a homeless youth census. [Evansville Courier & Press]

A 22-year-old man was taken into custody under suspicion of possible sexual exploitation of an 11-year-old runaway.
[Oakland Tribune]

A burned body that was found in Yakima, Wash. was identified as a 14-year-old missing runaway. [KIMA-TV]

Profile of De Anna Gmucs, a former homeless youth from Warren, Ohio. [Tribune Chronicle]

Iowa Homeless Youth Centers has matched a $500,000 challenge grant from the Myron and Jacqueline Blank Family Fund that will establish an endowment to serve homeless youth in the Des Moines area. [Des Moines Register]

WSB-TV in Atlanta is turning a $10,000 gift from ABC’s “Oprah’s Big Give” into a college scholarship endowment for local homeless youth. [WSB-TV]

Kids in Crisis, the Safe Place agency in Cos Cob, Conn., has opened registrations for its triathlon fundraiser. [Stamford Advocate]

The Cherokee Nation Tribal Council has authorized its Dept. of Children to submit an application to operate a Basic Center Program shelter. [Tahlequah Daily Press]

The Urban League of Rhode Island has had its Transitional Living Program renewed. [Providence Journal]

Natasha Cavanaugh, a Cincinnati attorney and volunteer with Lighthouse Youth Services, is one of 12 recipients of the “Reaching For the Stars” award for young African American achievers. [Cincinnati Enquirer]

Youth Today, a leading trade publication that focuses on youth work, has launched a new Web site at www.youthtoday.org.  Most youth work professionals are probably familiar with Youth Today, but if you’re not I urge you to visit their site at sign up for a free 10-day trial. It’s easily worth the subscription rate for ten issues a year ($29.50 for one year or $54 for three).

Youth Today’s old Web site was scant on content but the new version includes all the content you’ll find in the print publication, plus online updates, the ability to comment and staff bios etc. Check it out.