Counseling, Advocacy Services Listening Session
Meeting began at 11:45 with Renee Parker opening.
Judge Janine Kern: She speaks for herself and not the judicial system. She is here to express what she observes in the court system. Judge Kern presides over the juvenile court docket. She has 900-1200 kids a year coming through on the formal side of the court and another 775 are converted out. Over 2000 children come through the courts. This week 70 juveniles and families were in front of her. It is such a huge need that at the end of the day it warrants weeping. The juvenile dockets are closed therefore the community does not see the need because it is a confidential docket. Every week parents are near homelessness. Dept of Social Services (DSS) is overwhelmed. It's not just a matter of reffering these families to DSS, its far more than the court system can handle. Housing is a crisis for families of those who appear in juvenile court. I literally have families who are living in 1 room hotels, 4-5 people in one room and a small kitchenette. Then those parents have to get those kids to school and therefore transportation is an issue, provide food, and on top of that pay the rent. If they are unemployed or unable to work they are in essence one week or one month away from complete homelessness with their families. Housing is a huge issue, the waiting list I suppose is extremely long for families on the verge of homelessness. Maybe 1 month to 3 months which is too long to wait when you are in a crisis. The 2nd concern I have is transportation. We do not have a mass transit system. We have Rapid Ride which is much different than what is in Washington DC. Families don't have cars. This week I had a couple of crisis cases in court where a 5 month pregnant 15 year old has no way to get to school everyday and her mom does not have a car. Whose gonna pay the Rapid Ride bus ticket and how is she gonna get from home to Rapid Ride to catch the bus? So should this child drop out because we as a community cannot provide her with transportation to get to school? We don't want to be penny wise and palm foolish. There has to be a solution to this. So, transportation is a severe issue especially for children in the school system. The schools are with me in trying to strategize some solutions. Some of families are deeply impoverished that they don't have the money for the children that have dropped out of school who are 17 to pay for their GED test. What is going to happen to the young people in the community who have no GED or high school diploma? Children are not educated, and aren't able to pay for GED. This is in part to the severe level of poverty in the community. Judge Kern applauded the agencies who have been a positive influence for the children in the community. Girls Club, Boys Club, YFS, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, the Y and any other agencies.
Holli Vanderbeek - Director of YFS Counseling. We have through Youth and Family Services a health advocacy program for our boys and girls. One of the biggest needs we are seeing is with the adolescent population is having some positive role models and positive activities to participate in. We have the programs but they are limited because of funding and they are research based and they are covered by evaluations that prove that they work, but for instance the boys health program, we have advocates and than they can each handle about 25-30 kids and that's pretty tight. They provide transportation to appointments, medical, dental, health and take them out in the summer time and try to do camp activities. But we have a waiting list of 700 boys and 400 girls for health connection. When you think of all those kids, what are they doing? They are out there, some of them getting in trouble because there is nothing for them to do. I know that we have been trying for a couple of years to expand to a family advocacy so that we can do more for the entire family to help them get their housing, transportation, furniture, food and there basic needs. We have applied for several grants to get it done, but as we all know funding is getting tighter and tighter to get a hold of. There is a community needs assessment that is going on that we desperately need. The Cheisman foundation is helping to get that done. The needs assessment would help us clearly establish and define the goals we need.
Renee Parker states that there is a community needs assessment being done, and the results should be out around November of this year. There will be about 10 partners and United Way is one of those. The agencies will have access to all the information.
Jo Lee - President elect of Literacy Council: The need for students for the Literacy Council. We graduated 15 tutors. People are very anxious to reach out and help DSL (dyslexsic) students. The program is one on one and its free.
Alan McCoy - LSS: So far no one has talked about the need for foster care. Judge Kern mentioned the fact that DSS is overwhelmed, and that's certainly the case. In SD (our area) we have more incidences of abuse and neglect within the BH than any other district area in the state. LSS does have a foster care program. We have a need for more parents, particularly for native parents to serve because of a disproportionate number of native youth that go into the foster care system. Unfortunately the youth are massed in cross cultural homes. It is better if you don't have that. So we do have a need to recruit more foster families. It's the need at LSS, the Childrens Home, DSS and the state as well as DOC. Another aspect is the need for low income counseling services. There are 4 agencies in our community that provide counseling services on a sliding fee schedule. At LSS 89% of clients that come in for services do the sliding fee and are unable to afford the full fee. CSS, Behavior Mgmt Systems, and YFS provide services at fees that do not cover the cost of the services provided. Counseling will be required by the court as part of the reunification plan for youth to be reunified with their birth parents if they are in the foster care system. Those counseling services have to be available and they need additional funding to be able to provide the services.
Deb Warr - RC School District: I'm administrator for the counselors in the RC school district. A lot of the counsellors see a lot of children during the lunch hour. Counsellors work hard from the time they get to school until after school. They work nonstop with the kids, and its just not the high school and middle school kids. The young children in kindergarten even need counseling for the different things that are going on in the home. Canyon Lake, last year had 26% had reduced lunch, and this year its 42%. That alone, speaks to what is happening in our city and community.. The schools are limited to what they can do. Counsellors would like to meet 1 on 1 with students but that's not realistic when you have a school of 500 students. Some of the schools have 50-60% referral to our counselors that can't meet that need on a regular basis in our schools. We definitely see a need for more counsellors in our area. As far as transportation, you spoke about that earlier. Schools have struggled with Rapid Ride …and she is paying for a lot of boys to ride Rapid Ride to get them to boys club. Haven't had a lot of luck with Rapid Ride.
Holli Vanderbeek: What they have tried doing is expanding home-based service. So, if they can't get to us, we can get to them. With home base you occur a lot of down time with drive time going from place to place. Not effective use of counseling time. We are receiving increasing request for home base because of transportation issue.
Alan McCoy - LSS: Ecko's Holly statement. We have 1 full-time home base counselor through a contract we have with court services, but we frequently get request for home based services that we can't provide. It partly because of transportation, the difficulty people have with getting to their appointmnts. But then another part of it is, for us to go out and provide the service, title 19 will not cover it. So many of the families that are requesting and who would most benefit from home based services we can't provide it because there is no means of excessive reimbursement for the services that we provide even though they may be eligible for title 19.
Holli Vanderbeek: We're lucky at YFS cause if we can put them into one of our other programs and the program has some funding for counseling, we can use those dollars to cover the family and child. We do have that benefit.
Lloyd Sohl: Deb Warr has there been a change with transportation with Rapid Ride or is it an ongoing change?
Deb Warr: No there has not been a change, they stay the same. Our need has gone up. Basically we have a large group of boys that we have connected with Boys Club and there are currently about 15 boys that take the Rapid Ride right after school. They have 2 choices. They can either leave school 10 minutes early and catch the bus or have to wait 45 minutes and catch the later bus. In many cases, the school is paying for those kids fare which isn't too bad because there are 14 kids.
Mike Gibson: It's my assumption they get the kids to the Boys Club, but how do they get home?
Deb Warr: The working parents, pick the kids up. Rapid Ride is very attached to their schedule. So don't try and change it.
Clark Richardson - RC Academies: We tried to talk to Rapid Ride about routes and any changes that could happen and that's not on the chart at all. Although the community has changed and the needs have changed, the system has not changed to accommodate the need.
Pat Jones - RC Central Principal: In our case most of our needs are the 9th and 10th graders. Junior and Seniors stick with it. But the underclassmen, coming in from comfortable working size middle schools into a gigantic high school, its overwhelming for them. Huge transition issues. Speaking of 9th graders. Kids skip out easily. Area that can use a lot of help is from businessmen and communities. If a business owner in the mall sees a bunch of kids walking around, get on the phone or the police department and they will interact with the kids and get them back to school. Once they walk out of the door, we have no control. We can't do anything for them unless they are here everyday. That's whether they are elementary, middle school or high school. Kids will push the envelope as far as they can. We will do everything we can to help them become healthy productive young adults. Once they walk out the door, they will be the ones changing our oil, or giving us a new kidney and everything else in between. So the community has way more eyes than we do. Anyone under 16 years old is by law truant from school. The schools have excellent working relationships with judges, police, court system etc. If education is important to the community, then the community needs to get on board. There are a lot of things in place to help the kids, but can't use them if they aren't there.
Bruce Jordan - Stevens HS: I think everything you plan on doing here and discussing here is obviously for the preventative mode for education and probably the cheapest form verses remediation. However reality is we can do a lot of things to prevent kids situations, it just boils down to the dynamics in the families so diverse blended and whatever you want to call it. So what do we do with the kids? I have a situation where we have 18 yr olds that are homeless and bouncing around between friends and families. Resources that we are looking for requires a lot of money. What can we tap into? What happens after the diploma? We are telling the kids that if you get your diploma the world is wide open to ya. You can do anything you want to, which is true. What I'm looking for is a small scholarship to get them started after they graduate to get them into their first job interview, transportation to this or that, or their first semester of college tuition, or vocational school. Transportation was brought up and that is a need thing. Unfortunately any amount of money we spend cannot prevent a situation however once we're in a situation how can help from there.
Pat Jones: To stray away from doom and gloom. Positive sight: General Beadle is being rebuilt, and it's a high needs clientele. It's a whole community need center under one roof. Medical services, counselling services etc. You have to take care of basic needs first with children, and then the rest follows.