Jewish Child and Family Services' residential programs for at-risk adolescents

¶ … Jewish Child and Family Services (JCFS) since it is within my community, services a wide, not necessarily, Jewish population, has a significant reputation, and, most importantly, I myself have used some of its services and know some of its personnel well.

Having an easy access to Robyn Carr, one of the social workers there, and someone who has been affiliated with the JCFS for several years already, I asked Robyn to give me a rundown of the program related to prevention or correction programs for adolescents, before I asked her the following questions:

What is the purpose of your organization?

The JCFS offers a wide spectrum of services to all sorts of individuals. Although slanted as Jewish, it is not necessarily so, and there are many non-Jewish individuals who actually use our organization. In summary form, the JCFS profiles programs that include counseling, care for abused and neglected youth, support with children with disabilities and their families, special education, help for teens that have it rough, and residential and child welfare services which is the topic of this interview.

The residentail services are preventaive: we have helped many teens who run away from home, who are homeless, or who are otherwise going through some crisis by, aside from providing them with counseling, also providing them with a choice of five group homes each of which has a support system in place. There is a counselor on the premises all the time as well as the dormitory 'parents', and we attempt to give the adolescents as much support as possible to replace their current insignificant or negligible support framework.

How does this program specifically help residents of the community ( give a minimum of two ways)?

We provide the teens with counseling, and secondly we provide them with the warm and nurturing environment that they might otherwise lack. We also help them sort out their goals and assist them with finding jobs and, otherwise settling down in life, so that they refrain from turning to negative activities (such as crimes or drugs that would otherwise absorb them). Our objective in other words is to keep them off the street, and to keep those who have dropped out from dropping out even further. or, in other words, to pull them back once they have dropped out.

A resident in the Rosenberg house once told Shelley Weiss (the coordinator) that "when I was living in your house, there was always someone who understood me." Those are the kind of services that we try to provide. To understand and be there for the adolescents so that they feel they have someone -- a small family -- that cares.

The residents indicate a wide range of problems from mood disorders to oppositional conduct, ADHD, and developmental disorders. To deal with that spectrum we have a multidisciplinary team that cares for each resident's medical, educational, psychiatric, and emotional needs. Each home also has a qualified clinician who provides individual and group therapy when necessary.

Another program that is linked to the services that we provide the residents is the choice of participating in the Therapeutic Recreation program, that provides a number of activities from yoga to swimming to art and music features and, a ctually, is streamlined to suit our wide diversity of kids who not only come form a broad array of backgrounds but also demonstrate a dpecrum of religious beliefs (or disbelif), and a wide plethora of characteristics.

The JCFS provide five homes for the kids:

1. The Price Pregnant and Parenting Teen Group Home -- that accepts maximum 8 teens who are either pregnant or mothers. The people who work there include a nurse, a therapist, a child development specialist, as well as a well-organized childcare staff.

2. The Rosenberg Group Home that accepts girls from 12 to 21 years old. It can take as many as twelve at one time.

3. The Cummings Group Home -- small and highly structured accepted maximum six boys at one time between the ages of 6 and 13.

4. Aggregate Foster Homes:

(a) Talman Home (for girls) and (b) Campbell Home (for boys).

Both homes accept children between the ages of 11 and twenty. The Talman home can take in as many as six at one time, whereas at Campbell we do not accept more than seven children simultaneously. Both homes have a highly trained and supportive childcare staff, as well as a therapist on the premises.

The innovation with both places is that they are structured along family lines where a so-called foster parent (or foster couple) takes the place of the parents that the child may not have.

What is the cost of the services?

What happens to the resident/client as a result of the program?

The resident finds a safe place where he can grow up, discovers himself, finds out what he or she wants to do with his life, and gains the assistance to do it. This doesn't happen with all, of course, but a great many have been helped through the JCFS to a more secure future. With a parenting or parenting mum, the kid is given the tools to help her bring up her kid in a healthy way. Often these kids come from homes where they have no idea what it is to provide a healthy functional life for a child. The JCFS helps them.

The interview lasted for almost an hour. There were no difficulties since I was already well-acquainted with the place, had actually seen the homes several times when driving past, and had marveled at their spaciousness and proximity to wide open spaces, a river, and parks.

The new information that I gained was the extent to which the JCFS went out of its way to care for adolescents who would likely have been homeless without this support. I was also impressed with the details of the support network arranged for the youth, and with the observation that each need of the adolescent seemed to be thought of and provided for.

This information has been helpful to me in my intended career in the following way:

I intend to help children; particularly adolescents deal with the traumas of their life.

I have met many people who seem to think that economic resources would be sufficient to help youth find jobs or in other ways gain the resources that they need. What most struck me was this: even thoguh the homes are scantily furnished and are by no means palaces, the extent and intensity of the support was heartwarming. The adolescent's words that he finally found someone to listen to him stayed with me. Love and non-judgmental acceptance may be the most important things. Yes, money can help a person find a niche in life, but money is insufficient to get a person off the street. Following up later with some of the residents, I discovered that many would have returned to the streets a long time ago, despite their opportunity of free accommodation and food, were it not for the friends and care that they felt in these homes. Many of them, over and again, reiterated the bonds that they had formed one with another and, sometimes, with the staff members themselves. Some, through the staff members, had found support in the external community.

This presence of support was particularly evident in the foster home. There the 'foster parents' seemed to have a reputation for providing unconditional love, and I was greatly struck with the way that some of the residents, particularly the youngest age, mentioned them with great affection and ardor.

What have I learned? That whilst I may lack the resources to make an impact in someone's life, I never lack the capability of providing affection and warmth, and this I can dole out in a generous manner. Money I may not have, but the capacity to extend warmth and a listening ear -- as well as simple acceptance and empathy -- will always remain within my means.