Sunday, July 1, 2012

Sad Ending To New Beginnings

It hurt to see this story:
But Santos and four other staff members at the group home recently lost their jobs when the group home at S. 27th and W. Grant streets closed after 20 years.

"TLP was part of my life for so long that I felt it would be there forever," said Santos, sitting in an office at the emergency shelter. "It's hard to think that it's not there now. It's sad."

Andre Olton, the executive director of the Walker's Point center, said it's been a difficult five to six months phasing out the eight-bed group home, especially since he helped start it 20 years ago. But changing times, changing needs, reduced funding and possible future financial cuts meant taking a closer look at all the programs, he said.

"The key thing is that we want to continue to focus on priority services for youth, such as emergency shelter, transitional housing and prevention groups," he said. "We had to face the future in a realistic fashion, focusing resources where needed."

The 24-hour-a-day group home cost $360,000 annually, and the number of teens wanting to live there has been declining, he said.
I had worked in that group home for two years before going to work for Milwaukee County. It was a great program that had helped a lot of kids.

We would take in kids in who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks of the social services network. For a number of reasons, the kids found it untenable to stay at their homes.

At the group home, they were given room and board in exchange for which they were expected to go to school, get a part-time job and save the majority of their check so they would have money to get an apartment and some furniture when they moved out. We also taught them daily living skills such as budgeting, meal planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation as well as how to balance a checkbook or apply for a job.

I remember some of the kids that came through our doors during my stint there. I often wonder where they are and how they are doing.

This isn't the first time that the group home had to close. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans came in like a tsunami on the Contract On America* gimmick, the first they did was cut funding for programs for this. Then, after the last of the kids were moved out and just three weeks before the doors were shut for good, the federal government slipped in more funding at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute.

But by this time, almost all the staff had found new jobs and most didn't come back.

Anyway, it's sad to see this fine program ending. However, it does provide some comfort to see that they have a new program which provides many of the same necessary services.

The biggest shame is that programs like this have to scramble to fine enough funding to keep operating from year to year, while people like Walker throw good money after bad to their cronies and campaign donors.

Just one more sign that too many people have their priorities totally out of whack.

*No, that was not a typo.

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