Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991 TAG: 9102140283
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Sometimes these teen-agers are charged with wrongdoing that is not serious enough to require confinement. But at the same time, the situation may not allow them to return to their own homes, either.
While programs are available for kids with problems higher or lower on the scale, youths who once would have been tagged with the label of "incorrigible" have no place to go in Montgomery County. These are kids who are truants or runaways or who have committed petty, non-violent crimes.
Take, for instance, the case of a 13-year-old girl who essentially has reared herself since she was 8. She's not on the street. She eats and sleeps at home, but her parents have lost control of her.
She needs help but there's no right place for her now.
Or consider the kid locked up in the New River Valley Detention Center in Christiansburg for stealing a tape player from a neighbor. Youths aren't generally detained for something like that, but right now the courts have no other place to put him.
That may change soon.
Representatives from the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Services Unit and the Montgomery County Office on Youth got the go-ahead this week from the Board of Supervisors to apply for a grant that would set up a system of four group homes in Montgomery County.
The county is going to ask the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services for about $60,000 to get the program started. Normally, the department fully funds a new program for three years, reduces the funding to half in the fourth year, and expects the county to take over funding in the fifth year.
If the grant is approved this spring, the program will start July 1 and should be ready to take its first youths by January 1992.
The homes would house kids in trouble while they and their families get the counseling they need to put their lives in order.
The group homes would be supervised by a coordinator working out of the court services office and overseen by a board of directors appointed by the Board of Supervisors.
Four sets of house parents would be recruited and asked to bring up to four children at a time into their own homes. The children could be referred to the homes either by the courts, the welfare department, the schools or law enforcement agencies. And their stay could be either compulsory or voluntary.
A survey of about 165 randomly chosen court cases over a three-year period indicated that about 30 of those children could have qualified for the kind of group homes that are being planned, said Bob Sisk, supervisor of the court services unit.
Right now the county is having to send those children to group homes in Richmond or Northern Virginia, he said.
The group homes will help Montgomery County accept responsibility for its own children, said Russell Rice, director of the office on youth.
The house parents would be asked to provide the children with a stable living situation, Rice said. Part of their job would be to help the children gain a sense of self-worth and dignity and take responsibility for their own actions.
The house parents will get extensive training in how to handle behavior problems before they begin boarding children, Rice said.
The program's coordinator will be looking for couples who don't have any children of their own at home, Rice said. This is because the difference in the way parents treat their own children compared with temporary children sometimes causes problems.
Youths ages 13 to 17 may be assigned to the homes for one to three months. They would be expected to continue their education in whatever setting is appropriate - high school, vocational school or literacy training - during their stay.
While in the homes, they will be counseled about their problems. Often their own families also will be counseled to help remove the reasons for the kids being in the group homes in the first place.
"In most of these cases parents need some help," Rice said. "Sometimes it's because the parents don't have the skills to make a difference and sometimes its because parents have serious problems, too," he said.
The counseling probably would be provided through the agency responsible for placing a child in one of the homes. A family counseling program offered by the court services unit, for instance, has reduced the incidence of children getting into trouble again to 16 percent, Sisk said.
The proposed program has a broad base of support from the various agencies in the county that deal with children, Rice said. Currently, only about 30 home placements are available for children in the county, but they are taken up by children who are abused or neglected, he said.
The grant would be used to hire a coordinator and pay the expenses of keeping the children in the group homes, Rice said. The house parents would not receive a salary, but would be reimbursed for travel, food and other expenses.
The children's parents would have to continue responsibility for their child's clothing, medical care and some counseling services, Rice said.
"If you pay for everything, the natural parents are off the hook," he said.
by CNB