Quick action urged for homeless teens

AUGUSTA – Thirteen-year-old Susie, who thinks she is pregnant, is kicked out of her house and finds her way to a shelter for teens.

It takes a week or so to line up a doctor who can determine whether she’s pregnant, and weeks pass before a psychological evaluation is done. Then there’s an assessment by the state Human Services Department.

While the weeks pass, Susie is back on the street, back in trouble – or “back in the vortex,” as Douglas Bouchard, executive director of the Shaw House for homeless youths, describes it.

Shaw House in Bangor has found an innovative way to help children like Susie, whose case is real but name is fictional. Its approach is described in a report to be delivered to a legislative committee this week.

For the last 11/2 years, the Shaw House has been taking action fast after first coming into contact with youths from 10 to 17 years old who leave or are kicked out of their natural homes for the first time.

The first hours are critical, Bouchard said. Between 24 and 72 hours, the children get an evaluation from a case manager.

Arrangements are made for youths who shouldn’t return home to stay in their “natural support system,” which can mean the home of an aunt, uncle, grandparents or other member of their extended family. It can also mean families of friends.

An intervention team is assembled to try to make the new family structure work and keep it working.

An analysis comparing cases under conventional treatment plans, which can mean weeks in a shelter, and Rapid Response provides convincing if not overwhelming evidence that kids do much better when placed in family settings.

While awaiting services under the old system, children would be drawn back to the street, where they would be exposed to drugs, crime, prostitution and other risky behavior.

“Children who hit the streets face limited, sometimes hopeless, possibilities,” the report says.

Children treated under Rapid Response, by comparison, were much more likely to attend school, less apt to get into trouble with police, associate with gangs, engage in prostitution, take drugs or drink, said Bouchard.

After Rapid Response started, for example, 13 percent of the children said they had used drugs or alcohol, compared to 67 percent of the homeless children before Rapid Response. The questions were posed one month after they first sought help from the shelter.

“There’s a very small window to keep them from being pulled into the vortex,” Bouchard said.

“I had some of the most battle-hardened people working with me on this,” said Bouchard, adding that the results “just blew the doors off everyone.”

The Rapid Response program is the result of a legislative mandate backed by a $150,000 grant. Forty agencies from police to schools, clergy and mental health workers pooled their ideas to form the program.

Money is used in a variety of ways to keep youths in relatives’ or friends’ homes.

For example, if an aunt said she would take the child but needed a muffler on her car so she could drive him to school, the program bought the muffler.

Or, if a grandparent was willing to take the child but couldn’t afford a bed, Rapid Response would buy the bed.

When he outlines Rapid Response for the Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday, Bouchard will suggest such an approach could be successful in other Maine communities as well as cities across the country.

The Shaw House averaged 208 bed nights per month for youths before Rapid Response was initiated in mid-2000. Six months later, the number dropped to 91.

The law mandating the Bangor youth-homeless study also called for homeless-youth innovations in the Portland area.