KANSAS
Youth aid program has to turn away applicants
I (would not) wish homeless on anyone. Really this program is all I got to count on ... so I'm begging please help me — Wichita woman, age 20, Feb. 17, 2010
At the Wichita Children's Home the rescuers of young people keep a big binder filled with handwritten and desperate cries for help. Risa Rehmert, a veteran rescuer, calls the binder "The Notebook." It contains written applications, with short, handwritten life stories from people ages 16 to 21, nearly all of them either homeless or scared to stay with their families because of violence, drugs, domestic abuse or other problems.
Woman, 19:
Application question: Have you ever tried to harm yourself or someone
else? Please give details:
Answer: yes suicidal cut my wrist
In the last two weeks of May, staff members at the Children's Home received 29 applications for shelter from homeless young people, many more than they usually see in two weeks. They wanted into the Bridges program, which is located in part at the home at 810 N. Holyoke, and which provides transitional housing and the teaching of basic life and job-hunting skills to troubled or homeless youth. The average stay: six months. From January to the end of June last year, 72 homeless youths called the Children's Home seeking shelter. But from January to today, 127 homeless youths have applied. The big jump year over year, coupled with that big jump the last two weeks of May, has startled veteran youth rescue staff.
Most of these young people were turned down; there wasn't room. Bridges provides apartments with about $1.8 million annually from federal and state governments and charities like the United Way, but the apartments are at capacity. Staff at the Children's Home and at Bridges tried to help the young people find someplace to sleep or other help after turning them down, but don't know what happened to most of those turned away. "Most of them are probably back out living in their very difficult situations," Rehmert said.
The total population of Bridges is 47 young people. Twenty-two are parents; Bridges currently also cares for 26 of their children. Some applicants who did not get in were pregnant.
Girl, 17, pregnant:
... all I ask of who every reads this to PLEASE provide me and my
expecting son or daughter with a solid place that we can call our own,
and finally feel like we belong.
All the applications go into "The Notebook." The mini-biographies are so upsetting, even to veterans of youth rescue at the Children's Home, that Rehmert says she often prays over it whenever she opens it.
Nearly every person who applied has been turned down because there is no more room left in the Bridges housing. Rehmert and the other staff, after they fail to place them, wish them luck and give them sleeping bags, bottles of sunscreen, wet-wipes and, in the summertime, cans of bug spray and cheap flip-flops. Rescuers learned years ago, Rehmert said, that flip-flops are a good item. "Many of the young homeless people who come in here have burned feet in the summer from walking on pavement all day," she said.
Woman, 19:
... my dad in and out of jail and my mom work 2, 3 jobs to make sure
we had food things were good for a little my dad came home when I was
about 14 and everything change life of crime is what he was living and
raising his children around we would always fight and I was always so
depressed at 15 I try to take my life and from 14 to 17 I was a cutter.
Getting 29 applications in only two weeks surprised even the longtime veterans of youth rescue at the Home. "We've never seen any number like that," said Rehmert, who runs Street Outreach Services at the home and helps with rescues of both underage children and the youths who qualify for Bridges. "We wonder what kind of summer we're going to have here."
Man, age 19:
I lived with my Mother & Stepfather until I was eleven years old. Got
put in Foster care because my Stepfather Punched me in the face leaving
a big bruse. went to More than 30 homes before going to Bridges the
first time ... I need to do something so that I don't get sick or die
from my diabetes.
Some of the young people who wrote mini-biographies for Bridges have been savagely abused.
"I'm your typical band/school nerd that loves chocolate, music and long, quiet walks," begins one such application, written in a neat, 17-year-old schoolgirl's hand.
"The reason I'm applying for Bridges is because I don't want to live everyday wondering whether or not my next day is guaranteed.
... In the 3rd grade, Child Protective Services came to my school to inform students about child abuse. When they asked all the students if their parents had ever left bruises or cuts on them, I slowly raised my hand. When I showed a case worker my bruises, she took a picture and sent a worker to our home."
There have been at least 13 child-abuse deaths in the Wichita area since 2008, records show. All the victims were under 3; most were under 2. But besides dead toddlers, Wichita is home to hundreds of children abused, often by family or boyfriends of mothers. In a single year in Kansas there may be as many as 43,000 reports of abuse or neglect, according to the Kansas Children's Service League; those statistics don't include the abuses suffered by many of the young people older than 18 sheltered by Bridges.
What especially concerns Rehmert and other staff at the home is that the young people they try to rescue for the Bridges program are at risk to become the kinds of parents their parents were. "I am one of those who wish we did not have to have government get involved with families," Rehmert said. "But it is a necessary evil at times with some families, because there are some people who harm their children."
" (Mother) would beat us with shoehorns, belts and wooden paddles, but it didn't stop there," the 17-year-old Bridges applicant continued. "If a 'weapon' wasn't within her reach she would grab us by our hair and slam our head into a wall." One night, the girl wrote, "I woke to a stuffed animal being shoved down my throat to keep me from yelling. I was raped that night. And I wasn't raped by a stranger, a teacher or a coach. It was my own brother. The person I loved and trusted the most had damaged me in the worst possible way. Over a course of 3 years I was raped seven times by him. Now, I don't even think about him. If people ask about my siblings I just respond by saying I was raised as an only child. ... I'm an all-A Honor roll student. ... My SAT and ACT composite scores were above average..."I'm not a dumb child or an irresponsible one."
Roy Wenzl
20 June 2010
http://www.kansas.com/2010/06/20/1368688/youth-aid-program-has-to-turn.html
