Posted at 11:42 a.m., Thursday, August 19, 2004
Hale Kipa to run youth intervention program
Associated Press
The state has turned to a private organization to run an intensive intervention program to divert troubled youths away from incarceration or foster care.The Department of Human Services hired Hale Kipa Inc. under a two-year, $2.6 million contract to recruit, train and supervise community members on O'ahu, Maui, Kaua'i and the Big Island to become paraprofessional counselors, the department said yesterday.
Under the Youth Advocacy Program, the counselors are to spend an average of 15 hours a week in a youth's home, mentoring the family and teen to resolve issues relating to school, employment and relationships, it said.
The counselors will encourage at-risk youths to participate in such constructive activities as mentoring other children and volunteering at senior care centers, the department said.
Since it was formed in 1970, Hale Kipa has provided shelter and other services to more than 30,000 troubled youths.
"Our objective in partnering with Hale Kipa is to utilize the organization's expertise and experience in providing effective front-end services to at-risk youth, because we want to create better options than locking kids up or breaking up families," department Director Lillian Koller said.
The program will address the concerns of youths who will be diverted from entering the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility or Child Welfare Services, she said.
The program is estimated to help 240 children each year for the next two years, the department said.
Sharon Agnew, director of the state Office of Youth Services, which oversees the correctional facility, said the program will help provide for early intervention.
"It gives us an opportunity to provide services creatively to a broad range of kids that might otherwise continue to do high-risk behaviors," she said.
"I think what's unique and exciting about this is it's delivered by trained paraprofessionals in their own communities," Agnew said. "It's not outside people coming in, so much as it's people within a community helping their own children."
Developed in Harrisburg, Pa., the Youth Advocacy Program has been implemented in more than 100 locations on the Mainland, as well as in Europe and Latin America, state officials said.
Across the nation, more than 75 percent of the youths who complete the the program, regardless of their past juvenile record, don't return to the criminal justice or child welfare systems, they said.
