Reflections on program development, 2002
The superintendent in Adrian who hired me in 2001 said in my interview, “I don’t know if we have any homeless kids here, but the feds say we have to hire someone to go look for them.” Her interpretation of the mandates in the reauthorization of McKinney-Vento resonated with me because she was willing to hire a full time social worker to go find students who needed the district’s help. What she knew was that she didn’t know about homelessness.
Directly across from the board of education building where I was being interviewed is a 40 bed shelter for women and children, so that is where I started. When I called the shelter, they told me they had housed over 100 children that school year. Many of them had not attended school during their stay in the shelter because they did not want to switch schools.
Further developments, 2006 and beyond
Four years later I was still finding homeless children, and they were not all at the shelter. I once crawled under a porch to chat with a young man who was sleeping in a hole dug by a dog. “Do you want to go to school?” I asked. He blinked at me and asked if he could have a shower first.
I have found that it is very difficult to keep students in school when they are sleeping outside. The shower is one of myriad problems that children and youth face when they experience homelessness.
Promise Project
In response to the needs presented by unaccompanied homeless youth, we developed Promise Project to provide temporary housing since our community does not have a youth shelter. Donors promise to send in $25 a month, giving promise to promising homeless students who need temporary housing. The impetus for this venture came from an acquaintance who told me, “My grandmother gives $25 a month to a mission overseas. I would be willing to send you $25 a month for this mission.” Hearing that, I went on tour at Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Churches and even small prayer groups and women’s clubs to raise awareness and mobilize a donor pool. In 2008-2009 academic year, the Promise Project housed 60 students – and sometimes their families – to fill a much needed gap in services. The youth are usually housed by renting motel rooms.
Share the Warmth
At the same time a group of churches was starting an overnight shelter system for the winter months called Share the Warmth. Different churches host sleeping sites staffed by volunteers. I attended these planning meetings to fight for a policy to allow unaccompanied 17 year olds to utilize the newly emerging shelter. Many youth avoid individuals and services that might help them because they fear being sent back home. Share the Warmth unofficially allows 17 year olds to enjoy safety and stability within the comfort of a shelter program.
Roadmap to Graduation
In 2007, another project for unaccompanied youth was born. I was talking to a woman who had taken in an unaccompanied youth. She said “I have taken in a foreign exchange student every year. This year she was from Palmyra.” Palmyra is a very small rural area in our county that no longer has a post office or zip code.
Roadmap is a round the clock mentoring program for unaccompanied youth. I contacted our local Catholic Charities because they were involved in licensing foster care homes and I needed someone who could help screen mentor families. They had previously shown interest in being a part of the solution to childhood homelessness and signed on to be part of our team. In the beginning, the families stepping up to provide housing were struggling themselves. A stipend of $300 a month made the difference between a student staying in the home for a few days or staying until the end of the school year.
Roadmap students must be seniors on track to graduate in the current school year and not using alcohol or drugs. If the student is under 18 years, a power of attorney is required. The Roadmap to Graduation program is administered by a team including a caseworker from Catholic Charities, a caseworker from the Runaway and Homeless Youth provider and myself, the grant coordinator for our local McKinney-Vento grant. Our first year was paid for out of a grant from Kiwanis. We have received continued funding through the local Catholic Archdiocese and from ARRA. All of the funds are used to pay stipends for the mentor family. To date no funds have been used to administer the program. To date, 100 percent of our Roadmap to Graduation participants have graduated from high school on time. Presently 87 percent have gone on to higher education.
The lessons of the Roadmap program have been many. We found that people in the community were providing support to homeless youth but were worried when others started asking questions. Being part of the Roadmap program provided legitimacy; they had a name to call themselves. We require a commitment from the family to mentor their student until graduation. That took a great burden off the student since they no longer had to worry about the next place they would sleep or their next meal. We saw improvements in attendance, appearances and grades!
We also learned that these mentor parents and the matched youth needed support, so we provide them with a caseworker with whom they can share challenges and concerns. The relationship with a caseworker helps the host families understand their youth better and offers occasional mediation and referrals. In one family, the mother became angry and frustrated because her unaccompanied youth woman left her newly purchased clothes on the floor. The mentor Mom saw the clothes on the floor as a sign of disrespect and lack of appreciation for the clothes. What the Mom did not know was that the girl had never had so many clothes before and had never used a dresser in her life. She meant no disrespect, but she needed some help learning to organize. The youth’s mother never folded clothes. Clean clothes were put in garbage bags for each child. That conversation might not have happened without the caseworker’s presence, and a crisis was averted. The youth had a home and was able to graduate.
Caseworkers also help youth and families navigate the cultural and class differences they find. A Roadmap Mom took her newly matched unaccompanied youth out shopping and spent $130 on one outfit. The student was going to a conference for school and needed to look professional. The mentor Mom wanted the girl to see that it is good to have one nice outfit, especially because the girl was going to be interviewing for scholarships and jobs soon. The girl’s biological mother called me and very angrily stated “Do you know how many clothes you can buy at Goodwill for that money! That woman is teaching my child nothing…just how to waste money.” The student was caught in the middle of the two socioeconomic homes. We often talked with students about “learning the language of middle-class.” These students continue to walk through life with one foot planted in generational poverty and the other foot somewhere in the middle class. It can be a difficult walk to get to graduation.
Wrapping Up
These projects have been very successful at providing needed services for youth, and they all started with conversations. We needed to develop local housing solutions for our youth because they were afraid of moving to another county, even though there was a shelter in it. In their familiar surroundings, they know friends and have a support network. They are close to their schools and associated activities. In a strange city or county, they might not know where it is safe and they don’t have a network of friends. If we had to send them to another community to live, they would lose their proximity to academic, athletic and social activities with their peers.
Read more about the Roadmap to Graduation program and other similar initiatives.
