Island Voices
Hawai'i youths are in danger

By Corey T. Adler
Youth worker at the Hale Kipa Emergency Shelter and a tutor at Palolo School

In Hawai‘i, there is a pervasive lack of preventative services for wayward adolescents and their families.

Most programs that do exist are aimed at the highest levels of acuity; programs geared toward prevention are backlogged.

The Department of Education, which has the potential to see every child in the state, is struggling to meet the educational needs of school-aged children diagnosed with mental health issues. New Band-Aid programs are emerging to deal with current problems; preventative measures are not being taken.

The state is failing its teens.

At Hale Kipa, there are approximately 65 bed spaces for youths 10 to 20 years of age. Of those 65 beds, there are two spaces for "walk-in" teens; the other 63 spaces are occupied by youths with "system involvement," meaning the government pays for their stay. A parent calling the hotline inquiring about services may be offered a one-time counseling session.

Families and teens who come in for the counseling session and are interested in shelter placement are told to expect at least two to six weeks before a space becomes available. This delay is prevalent in youth services and can be detrimental to the effectiveness of a prevention program and harmful to the adolescents and their families.

According to Carol Bongo, American School of Psychology Psy.D. candidate and Ho‘okala outreach worker, there is an approximate month-long waiting period between arrest and court date for youths. During this time, she says, they often continue their behavior, accruing arrests that will lead to a harsher penalty in court as well as further dividing the youths from their families.

Bongo cites an example of a 14-year-old girl arrested for over eight runaway and curfew violations and who was suspected of prostitution before she went before a Family Court judge six weeks after her third status offense. During this time, Bongo says, the girl’s legal guardian had no choice but to continue calling in runaway reports. At one point, the legal guardian contemplated leaving the girl in police detainment to force the state to file neglect charges, take the minor into custody and provide services.

While there are many youth services agencies, there is precious little space. The available services are usually reserved for those with Department of Health, Department of Human Services or Family Court involvement. Families not involved in the system have little choice but to either find private counseling or wait until the case escalates and requires system intervention.

One solution to this problem would be to create a community resource center. This program would offer a single entry point, outreach services and serve as a referral center to other programs. The goal of this program would be to create an option for adolescents and their families who are not able to receive government services. It would offer ongoing individual, group and family counseling. This program could then expand and be taken into the schools.

Though all elementary schools have a counselor who deals with the children who get into trouble, a prevention program must bring lessons to the children.ÊImplemented much as the Honolulu Police Department’s DARE program, which brings police officers into the classroom to teach drug awareness, a good prevention program should bring anger management, accountability, responsibility, decision-making skills, as well as substance-abuse awareness into the classroom. Unlike DARE, which is limited to a semester in school, this program should be ongoing throughout high school for those who are falling through the system cracks.

Hawai‘i is failing its teens and their families. We must begin to look for ways to prevent rather than punish or we will soon be out of space in the detention centers.

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