Program a lifeline for lost youths
After years of saving children from abuse, neglect, homelessness and abandonment, some things still make Sarah Robinson lose sleep at night. One of them is a sheet of paper with 30 names on it.
Robinson, the executive director of the Wichita Children's Home, calls the names on that list "the children almost nobody else wants." She wants them. But she cannot help them now because the Bridges transitional living program she oversees, along with the rest of the Wichita Children's Home, has been running at full capacity for months.
The Children's Home takes in abandoned, abused, neglected, homeless or runaway children, from newborns to 17-year-olds. Bridges funded mostly by federal dollars provides shelter, apartments, schooling, help with college and job training for 56 young people ages 16 to 23, and the 18 children of those young people. The waiting list has been growing for months. "As the recession continues to get worse, the waiting list is going to get bigger," Robinson said.
Last week, Robinson allowed a reporter talk to some of her Bridges residents about what has happened to them in life. To protect their privacy, she asked that The Eagle use only first names.
Living under a bridge
Bobby, 21, used to live under bridges along the Arkansas River
in Wichita. In winter he would put on three pairs of jeans and whatever
shirts he had at the time, and he would stuff other clothes into his
sleeping bag for more insulation. He would sleep on the concrete, and
his back would hurt all the next day.
In summer, because he had no place to go, "I'd walk all day until my feet were covered with blisters." And then he would roll himself into his sleeping bag under the bridge. "I never slept much under the bridges," he said. "You live under a bridge, you always watch for somebody trying to mess with you."
The Bridges program helped Bobby graduate from high school. He has a job maintaining the grounds at the Children's Home. He has repaired his relationship with his family. Sometimes, when he hears other defiant young people at the Children's Home gripe about how "this place stinks," he speaks up. "Try living under a bridge sometime and see how you like that," he tells them.
Finding peace
One night, when he was 4, James played with his mother's
cigarette lighter, spilled lighter fluid all over himself, and set
himself on fire. It burned off his face and it burned the ends off some
of his fingers, though he has full motion back now. He grew up with a
drug-addicted father, and guardians who fought and drank.
After years of pain, burn rehabilitation and bouncing from one bad family situation to another, he turned into an angry teen who didn't want to talk to anyone. "I was mean to people."
He now works as a clerk at an areagrocery store. Bridges provides his transportation. He's 18 and a high school graduate. He has a job, and he has plans: He wants to study computer engineering in college. And he says he's laid-back. In Bridges, he said, he has lived in peace.
Helping young people
Robinson for years has pointed out the obvious about the
children who live in Bridges and the Children's Home:
Most young people who come in to the Children's Home are not bad children, but have been abandoned, abused, neglected or otherwise harmed by those who should have loved them.
Many of the teenagers never received a birthday present until they got into Bridges. Every young person in Bridges gets a birthday present every year.
Whenever law enforcement officers inside and outside Wichita find abused, homeless, runaway or neglected young people, they take them to the Children's Home.
Nationally, Robinson said, programs like Bridges have only about a 20 percent success rate in turning these damaged and mistreated young people away from drugs and misbehavior. That's not an impressive success rate, she said, until people contemplate the alternative of doing nothing.
Creating a future
Lisa, a redheaded teen with a stocking cap and an upbeat
attitude, had smiled and nodded when she heard Bobby tell how he had
chided the Children's Home complainers. "I've heard the same stupid
things from some kids here," she said. "They don't know how good they
have it; they don't know how hard it's going to be if they did not have
this."
She started the same way. From a young age, she smoked pot, got kicked out of school and entered the juvenile justice system. She went through rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous counseling, relapsed a time or two, then began after a long time in Bridges to form ideas about her future.
Had it not been for the peace and help she found here, she said, she might be miserable at home, or "in lockdown somewhere." She's now close to finishing high school, completing courses she can take online with the Wichita school district. And she's a peer counselor, helping the Children's Home social workers talk teens through their problems with drugs. She wants to go to college to become a psychiatrist.
Not giving up
Courtney grew up with a meth addict for a mom. At an early age,
she tried meth herself. What followed was a miserable life of getting
drunk, getting high, getting caught, getting jailed, getting rehabbed,
and then relapsing and doing it all over again. Except for one thing,
the 18-year-old fits all the stereotypes of a teenager doomed to failure
in life: She's got an arrest record, a history of flirtation with meth,
a record including at least five months in jail and she's six months
pregnant.
But she has not given up. And the reason for that, she said, is that Bridges didn't give up on her. "I'd be dead or in prison if I hadn't got in here," she said.
The one thing that doesn't fit the profile of a failed teen is that she just completed a full semester at Butler Community College. She wants to become an addiction counselor. She figures she knows the subject well enough to help.
Roy Wenzl
26 April 2009
