Youth Listening Session

Craig Tzisen-Police Chief-As an overview of my career in law enforcement the juvenile issues remain an issue. In my view of statistics seems to me that maybe 5-10 yrs ago when adult crime went up 5-10% & juvenile crime went up 10-20%. Those numbers have stabilized a little bit as adult crime has taken a slight dip in the last year or two & juvenile crime has maybe stabilized but there remains a large gap indicating that the youth issues are taking up a disproportionate amount of the juvenile justice system's time. As far as issues that I see in the community, that are sort of on the front burner. Many of the issues remain a concern & if the kids are in school, we have fewer problems & if kids aren't getting pregnant we have fewer problems & kids aren't on alcohol we have fewer problems, if they aren't drug addicted we have fewer problems. All of these remain issues in the community but one issue stands out & that is the use of Methamphetamine. I guess I've never been on the "drug bandwagon", sort of speak, because drugs have always been an issue in the community & they've always been a threat but to me Meth is a huge, huge threat because it is highly addictive & it is extremely destructive & it also has it's side effect that in production, Meth labs have affects on children & people that might be in hotel rooms & houses wherever Meth might be being produced. So I think that we need to face the reality of that Meth presents a real extra-ordinary new drug risk in the community & do what we can to attack that with education, support or a combination of both.

Judge Merton Tice-In my 30 + yrs of being a judge, I have never been more frightened of a drug in my life than Meth. It's insidious, cheap & relatively simple to make wherever you want to go to make it. I don't know what we can do here, exactly. There is no more of a frightening drug; heroine doesn't even come close to being as threatening as Meth does. But I'll step past that because I think that is more of a law enforcement issue. But it takes a year to treat a person effectively & a normal treatment programs last 30 days & still 97% of people fail it. We have to be aware of it & we've got to do something about it but I can't do anything so I would like to talk about what I can do. The juvenile court, in coordination working together, with the various systems, too often we tend to focus on our own individual area & we don't recognize other areas & the people who can provide resources. I'm excited about the school providing the new facility so there can be coordination & combination of one stop shopping for the kids & the families. That's exciting. I would like to see the court system, the social service system, the law enforcement system, the counseling services to somehow develop a more unified approach to handling the juveniles & our juvenile problems. Juvenile problems transcend entire behaviors & we have 6-7 different areas in which judges handle juveniles & each of those areas may be handled by a different judge whether it's adoption, termination of parental rights, whether it's child support or domestic violence or divorce. All of those areas will be handled by a different judge often times. When that happens, you have 5 different judges deciding the life of the same children. One of the biggest things that I'd like to see is to develop some sort of a process that brings all of the providers & all of the people who are involved in family systems together. I would like to see us develop better coordination in those areas. I think it's important that we recognize the linkage between all of us & the court system. We are not just a system sitting out there in isolation. Somehow I would like to see us develop a process that would allow us to more affectively work together & share information about various aspects of a child's life in which we are all involved in. One of the things I appreciate is Mike Murphy, who has been working with the programs that Diversions has developed which is truancy court. This addresses the kids in the school system easier & earlier than you can when they get into the court system. We can divert the kids from the formal system into a more informal process & deal with the problems that way rather than run them through the system. I think we got to work with kids early on.

Judge Janine Kern-We each year, just on the formal side of the court, see 900-1200 new cases. Another 750-1000 cases are diverted. The cases are too great for the court to tackle on it's own. We are fortunate to have the schools in court with us now. The Behavior Management Systems Therapists & YFS Therapists are in court with us now & are partnering with us & the parents, along with the child. I would just like to talk quickly now about alcoholism abuse which is severe. Just since Jan. 1st, I've seen three children drink to the point of passing out & all three were beaten while unconscious. Drinking to the point of intoxication is a problem. What do we do about that as a community? Prevention. The Lifeways program has made an enormous difference. I think that the Lifeways should be expanded to every school that is appropriate. Children are now telling me that they are seeing their Lifeways counselor. It's working & it's getting through to the kids. It's a good bang for your buck. We're preventing further abuse & addiction & we're starting a good therapeutic relationship right in the schools. It's great. I had 60 kids in court last Tues. & about 25 were alcohol related. We're talking about life threatening behaviors. On Meth. I echo what the chief & Judge Tice said. Our numbers on the abuse & neglect docket are very high. We feared that this would happen in the late 1980's. Before I became a judge I was the state drug prosecutor for 6 yrs. Meth was here in this community in 1988, 1989, 1990. Now it's in the general population. I have had 21 children using or possessing Meth since Jan. 1, 2006. These numbers are, I'm sure, much higher with Lifeways, service agencies, Wellspring, etc. We have to put $$ into prevention. Truancy is another big issue. What are we going to do with hundreds & hundreds of these children in our community who are 16 yrs. & over that have dropped out? Well, they are the ones committing burglaries, they are using drugs & alcohol. Kids are dropping out of school the minute they turn 16. Every child is going to have to have a plan. 100's of kids in the community are not in school, not working, etc. We need more options for high schools. We can't have a waiting list to get into alternative schools. The problem isn't getting better, it's getting worse. The last issue is mentoring or role modeling. We haven't been able to access a core of mentors. Kids don't have parents or mentors; simply no one to be in their corner. They need role models in the community to give them a chance.

De Glasgow--Lifeways-We provide school based prevention & early prevention for drug & alcohol abuse. We are in our 3rd year. We provide back up prevention diversion. We received last year a rural health grant. We currently have our programs in Custer, Hill City & Rapid City. We are expanding faster than we want to at times. When we talk about Meth prevention, it's not a gateway drug. Prevention is key!!

Jay Van Hunnik--Wellspring-Family is key with all of this. There are a variety of societal & economic factors, which are realistically limiting the amount of involvement & time that any family has to spend with their kids. From my prospective, I want to reinforce what people are saying about the prevention end of things. We need to put more of our resources into prevention. For those kids that do go into treatment programs, inpatient & outpatient, often times the family is left out of that treatment process or are minimally involved. We still have this mentality that we provide this treatment or bring about this "cure" & then we put them back in their homes & back in their community & expect that they're going to behave differently. Without some support from family, mentors follow up services-we are doing that young person & that family a disservice. We do some intensive outpatient programming, drug & alcohol, as well as kids with behavior problems as well as some inpatient. We have a waiting list of 30-40 kids for our behavioral residential treatment program. We just recently, I don't know if this is going to continue or not, but we have started developing a waiting list for inpatient chemical dependency program for girls. In the residential treatment, part of the reason we keep our young people so long, is because there aren't enough resources for them to follow up with. Prevention services are needed after they are let out of the inpatient help they receive. We need to take a look at the laws & administrative rules that hinder the process of treatment for people that are addicted to Meth. 45 days in not adequate to treat kids that have been physically & sexually abused, drug addicted, etc.

Mike Murphy-Assistant Principal at Central High School-Our biggest issue is truancy. We can't teach them if they're not there. Truancy court is a team of people working together. It's the parents, the school, juvenile diversion, etc. Kids should feel safe when they are at school. As a community, we kind of condone adults questioning kids being out of school like they used to. The resources are lacking. For example, kids can't get to school. One of our problems is students can't get to school because bus service is limited. There are some simple things that as a community we could work out. When kids aren't in school, that's when, the issues of drugs, burglaries & drinking take place. What we preach in truancy court is that they are there to receive an education, not a diploma but with an education, comes the diploma. If the kids are not there, that when we feel the affects of that in the high school as well as in North Middle School. The earlier we can get the kids to school, the less gang problems we will have. Prevention helps with the drug problems, gangs, etc.

Jim Gass-Assistant Principal at Central High School-Family, school & the community have to work together. It is important to retain that liaison between the family, the school & the community. I have sat in my office & literally listed the # of community assets that can be made available to parents for anything from juvenile diversion, abuse cases, etc. but, parents are not taking advantage of the resources available for their children. We need a unified effort in changing this community's perspective & realizing that we can say, "yes" to working towards a common goal.

Pam Teaney Thomas-RC Area School District & President of ASAP Inc. I have worked in the area of prevention for 20+ yrs. I commend the high schools for being able to function with such large schools. Stevens currently has 1700 kids & Central has 2300 kids. Schools are so big that the kids feel that the schools don't care. We have 1 Lifeways advisor at Central High School for 2300 kids. When we look at that & we talk about truancy, how are we going to expect a kid to come to school when it feels like you're just a number there? Social norming training is being looked at, which would teach kids how to do leadership & how to take a stand against violence & how to say "no". We also have a by-stander training coming up with Dr. Berkowitz to talk about how to empower kids to say "no" it's not ok to beat up other kids. The other part is how to empower parents. Statistics also show that when the faith-based community is empowered as part of the process, that that helps to solve the problem. We're trying to find ways to partner with our ASAP group, & we're in our 6th year of trying to help them help families.

Judge Merton Tice-Can I ask how many people here have heard about Dr. Berkowitz coming? (2 people had)

It's a great program & we need more programs like that in our community. There should be a network or email list that programs like that can be broadcasted to everyone.

Renee Parker- United Way. If you get info like that to me I can send out a massive email to get that info out there.

Carrie Robley--YFS Girls Inc. I am the new Girls Inc. director however I have been with Girls Inc. for about 10 years as the coordinator for their Health Connections program, which is a health focused case management program for girls ages 5-15. One of our biggest issues as far as family services go is access to the services. Our agency provides transportation to eye appointments, dentist appointments, etc. We only have 2 on staff doing that so obviously our ability is limited. Tutoring is being offered. The girls want to learn, they want to keep up in school & they don't want to fall back a grade but due whatever life circumstances they have whether it be living in a hotel or having a chaotic home life, trying to keep up is hard. We see a lot of our girls that are stuck at home taking care of younger siblings due to parents working or are sick or they are unable to care for them. When you're looking at the younger age ranges the reason that they are missing school is very different from the middle school age kids. Kids are taking on a lot of different roles. When it comes to counseling you just can't miss 3 weeks-consistency is important. In our program we provide transportation for these girls to get to these types of appointments. We purchase bus passes through Rapid Ride for our kids as a reward for attending school. For housing purposes & cost wise, a lot of our families are moving to those outskirt areas but then transportation in such cities as Box Elder & Black Hawk is limited. Sometimes we forget to offer support to those that are really good parents & we need to provide recognition for them to let them know that they are doing a great job & that they need to continue to do so.

Jay Van Hunnik-Wellspring-This has reminded me that one of the other type of obstacles that we have created is that we have a system that if your child is in the custody of a state agency, the services are there but when the family trying to keep the child in the community & in the home, these services aren't offered. We need to support & encourage those families who are trying to make it better in the family for those kids.

Renee-United Way. This is the 3rd year in a row that transportation has come up as big issue & can we take a couple of minutes to discuss this. What are the issues? Everyone threw out transportation problem areas such as Box Elder, Black Hawk, Rapid Valley, Nemo Rd. Others commented that Rapid Ride won't cooperate. Central High School is also a problem area for transportation.

Wayne Rosby-Valley View Elem. Parents have a hard time getting around. They have to travel 5-6 miles to get their children registered. ½ day Kindergarten is also a problem for parents not having transportation for the kids to & from school. They either don't have cars or the expense of running them is too high.

Amy Willman-YFS Child Care. Our program provides transportation from most of the in-town schools. We are seeing an increase in the cost of gas. We have to have CDL bus drivers, which with that comes an enormous amount of training we have to have a budget for that. Also, our buses are not in the best of shape either. There is a high cost with replacing them as well as the maintenance on the buses is really causing a hardship on our program. We absolutely see the necessity in providing that service for the parents of kids in Kindergarten because most parents are working 2 jobs, if not working 2 jobs & attending school, & it's impossible for them to transport the kids in the middle of the day.

Jay Van Hunnik-Wellspring. I want to reinforce the problem we're having with scheduling. We provide some services in the evening hours too & the school has been really good with getting kids transported to us. During the times that parents are at work & getting the kids to us is a really big issue.

Rod Haugen-South Park Elem. We have a problem getting kids from Star Village in the winter is a problem.

Scott Bader-Club for Boys-We are busing kids from the 2 schools in the Valley now. Formerly those kids were in the north Rapid area & now can still be a part of our program with this service. We are hoping to provide this service to Wilson Elem. School next year as those kids are walking to our facility & are having to cross every major artery in the community to get from Wilson to the Club for Boys.

Carol Linn-Linn Productions. Why is busing not offered here?

Jim Gass-Assistant Principal Central High School. Rapid Ride is making trips by the schools & theoretically those buses should be full & I'm not seeing that.

Troy Volesky-Rapid Valley Elem. School-We're going to need high schools spread out.

Renee-United Way asked when transportation was a problem. Those responding said that it's only M-F.

Judge Janine Kern-It's $30 for a bus pass to Rapid Ride. Nobody has the $30 for that. If it's doled out & then you have an absence or a tardy then you won't be eligible for another bus pass. Then there's a problem with the routes. I'll hold the parents accountable & I'll lock them up if they don't follow my court order on getting their child to school but it's very difficult if they don't have a way of getting the child there.

Lisa Plumb-Knollwood Elem.School-Unfortunately we're often in reactive mode & we're dealing with the crisis before us but we need to be more pro-active with the families. Transportation is a problem but we also have to look at why these children aren't getting this transportation. We had a federally funded family support counselor who went to the family's home to say, "What do you need, how can we help?" Unfortunately that person is gone now-we don't have that for next year. I applaud YFS & Boys Club for being so family oriented. Until we truly have a consistent connection for families within our community-we will fail.

Wayne Rosby-Valley View Elem. School-Families are scared to come into the schools, to make that connection. The family counselors make that connection between the schools & the families. We are using some of our Title 1 funds to fund these counselors.

Pam Teaney-Thomas-RCAS & ASAP, Inc. Kids will sometimes come to school because they are involved in another activity such as basketball but because the schools are so packed the kids are sometimes having to be at the school for practice at 6am. This sometimes causes kids from lower income families, where the parent can't get them to practice that early because they are working, not be able to participate in these activities.