Author Topic: A different approach to helping troubled teens - mentoring  (Read 2203 times)

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Offline hurrikayne

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A different approach to helping troubled teens - mentoring
« on: September 08, 2008, 10:43:36 PM »
Mentors work to help troubled teens

By CLAUDIA ROWE
P-I REPORTER

One girl, at 17, is already a mother of two and charged with prostitution. Life so far, to hear her tell it, would be unbelievable to most people.

Another youth, 18-year-old Carlos Bernardez, faced a weapons possession case and says his main goal now is to become a better father to his daughter while finding a way to earn money -- legally.

Both teens present such an array of challenges that any number of caseworkers might immediately give up. But a small, quiet battalion of adults is determined to mentor them over these hurdles, along with hundreds of other youths in King County.

Mentors, trained professionals or dedicated volunteers, stay-at-home moms or ex-gang members, appear to be among the least expensive, most effective means of stemming a tide of youth crime and gang violence that is beginning to make funeral attendance de rigueur for hundreds of young people.

In the past year, six teenagers have been killed in gang-related shootings in and around Seattle. And the list of court-referred kids awaiting mentors is growing -- far longer than the roster of those who have signed up to serve.

"We're just trying to do everything we can to address this and make a difference for our young people, because they're losing ground," said Hazel Cameron, a committee chairwoman with Washington State Mentors and executive director of the 4C Mentoring Coalition in Seattle.

The undertaking itself sounds deceptively simple: Spend time with a teen; take him to coffee or a ball game; perhaps help find a job or prepare a resume. Essentially, listen to their dreams.

Basic as this sounds, a recent report evaluating the results of six local programs has shown that two in King County are making significant inroads.

The ROYAL project -- Raising Our Youth As Leaders -- which works with teenagers who have come through the courts and are considered the most likely to commit new crimes, sits at the top of the list. Run by six staffers who serve about 70 young people each year, ROYAL's structured, intensive program costs about $12 a day, per youth, and dramatically cuts the risk-to-reoffend, according to an evaluation commissioned by the city's Department of Human Services.

In contrast, ROYAL staffers note, it costs more than $100 daily to house a youth in detention.

At ROYAL, the 17-year-old mother of two, incarcerated five months ago for soliciting, is now building and marketing a Web site focused on the prevention of human trafficking, rape and other issues concerning women and girls internationally.

"I felt like I'd hit rock-bottom," she said. "I was locked up. My kids were at home. And when someone says, I'm going to offer you help -- and we're not judging you -- I'm going to jump on it."

Still, her mentor, Paul Campillo, said that when they first met, he never could have conceived of such progress.

"She is the first person I've ever seen who might actually complete the entire curriculum," he said, noting that ROYAL avoids finger-wagging lectures and works with each youth at his or her own pace.

"Mainly, we try to teach them that there's a direct correlation between what you're thinking and what you're getting," Campillo said. "Usually that's a revelation. We basically teach them that they're responsible for their own lives."

It may sound pat. But at ROYAL, this takes a 24-hour commitment.

"We're out at 2 o'clock in the morning with these kids," said project manager Debra Robinson, who believes program staffers have stopped at least two teen shootings in the past 18 months, perhaps more.

"We've had a couple of calls where basically, they tell us they're thinking about doing some things -- and they're not talking about going sledding," she said. "There was a gang funeral recently, and a client came in and said they knew who'd done the shooting and that he and some folks were looking for this person. Our staff really helped him to understand the implications of that."

In West Seattle, Terrence Pream, 19, believes he is living evidence of the same. The son of Cambodian immigrants, his eyes are quiet and he wears a wispy goatee, but talks of a gang youth during which three close friends were shot dead in six years.

Still, his mentors at the SafeFutures Youth Center (which also received high marks in the city's report) hung on, steadily nudging Pream away from gang life and back into school.

"It was them pulling me in here, and the gang pulling me out there," he said. "I was pretty heavily involved. I wouldn't have come by myself, but they got about eight of my friends in here, too."

In June, Pream graduated from Career Link Academy and plans to start classes at South Seattle Community College later this month -- the first in his family to ever get that far in school. He has already begun mentoring the next generation of street-running youth.

The staff here were big role models for me," he said. "I had a pretty harsh life, and if I didn't have this, have mentors, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be dead or in jail or somewhere -- not somewhere good. So I think it's really important."

At both SafeFutures and ROYAL staffers are paid, trained and experienced. But around King County, adult volunteers are getting involved as well.

"A lot of people get nervous when they hear the word mentor -- they think it's this huge thing," said Cameron, of the 4C mentoring program. (The name stands for Clergy-Community-Children Coalition.) "But a mentor is just a caring adult who says 'Yes, I will spend some time one-on-one to add some value to a kid's life.' "

Cameron has done so herself, three years ago mentoring a young woman named Olivia, who had spent time in juvenile detention but is now going to school to become an attorney, married, working and raising two children.

"It didn't take a lot," Cameron said. "It just took me saying, 'Yes.' And then 'What is it I can do for you, Olivia?' She told me, 'I need a job.' So I called my church, and a woman there had a daughter running a day-care center. The next thing you know Olivia had a job -- and has had it now for two years."

At the moment, what Cameron herself needs are black men willing to step up and do the same. Not that race-matching is essential. But it helps, experts believe, especially when trying to work with black teens.

For African-American youths, she said, "I think it's extremely important." Many of them -- for various reasons -- have not had the role models they've needed, and a lot of black youth on their applications say, 'I want someone who can relate to me. I want someone who looks like me.' But I've seen it work both ways.

"In the end, it's about what happens in the heart."

http://http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/377659_mentors04.html?source=rss
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