WYOMING

County has new approach to troubled juveniles

A new community service program that matches the interests of troubled children with jobs in the community is proving to be a success, officials say.
The Progressive Youth Program is run jointly by the Wyoming Department of Family Services and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Albany County. It is the brainchild of Alec Shea and Nathan Drendel.

“We weren't successful with every kid, but the stats show we were more successful than we were before,” said Shea, director of the Albany County Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Statistics show that about half the children who get into trouble and end up on probation get into trouble again. But those in the Progressive Youth Program in Albany County have a recidivism rate of just 9 percent.
“My hope is that this is a program that will be developed statewide,” Shea said.
Shea and Drendel devised the program when they were juvenile probation officers with the Department of Family Services.
“When we started ... we read through a lot of case files, and we found that a lot of kids were getting in trouble for hanging out with each other,” Shea said. “We thought, allow them to hang out together, but allow them to hang out together doing positive things.”

Working with various state and local officials, including District Judge Jeffrey Donnell and Assistant County Attorney Jim Schermetzler, they established a community service program for juvenile delinquents in Laramie that allowed the kids to work in areas that they have interests in.
If youths are interested in fixing cars, the program gets them into an auto repair shop. One aspiring beautician completed community service work in a salon. A sports enthusiast went to work in a gym.
“This way, they really see the good that they're doing, and so it really helped,” said Drendel, activities director for Albany County Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Shea said they didn't want community service to be limited to chores such as cleaning toilets or picking up litter, although those have some merit.
“We looked at it as a way we could get a kid invested in the community,” he said.

Drendel said children who have been in the Progressive Youth Program have been offered regular jobs by businesses after completing their community service.
Shea said he and Drendel also get the troubled children involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters, mixing them with other youth in the mentoring program to help foster positive relationships.
They arrange activities, such as fly fishing or kayaking, sometimes with the children's probation officers. That helps create more positive relationships between the children and their probation officers, who otherwise normally play enforcement roles in the children's lives.

“It's a huge difference to a kid on probation to see that probation officer in a different light,” Shea said.

25 July 2005

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