Thanks for coming to Esperanza Thursday. And for those of you who were not able to make it, you were greatly missed. You were given a task to create criteria for potential youth clients to join our organization and participate in the program. Then you had to unanimously choose 8 out of the 12 youths who fit those same criteria. Our goal for that exercise was to give you an insider’s perspective of what is like to hold a person’s future in your grasp and the pressures that come along with the decisions. Looking at the group’s function, some wanted to save everyone, whereas others were willing to make compromises. In reality, individuals like Jon and Omar couldn't always be saved. The decision for the two will ultimately have ramifications for the other who wasn't chosen.
My
question for the class is why did having a support system (family, guardian
etc.) play a role in choosing whether or not you accept the individual into
Esperanza and who would you consider to be part of your support system(family,
guardian)?
10 comments:
David, thanks for facilitating the visit and discussion. It was a great exercise, and a pleasure to meet both of your mentors.
My understanding of Esperanza is that its services are contingent on the family dynamic. Therefore, I think many of us honed in on available "support systems" during our decision process.
I would operationalize a support system as any adult family member or guardian, be it a neighbor, coach, etc. If that system is not there, it limits the potential success of the young individual.
Essentially, the question came down to: do we choose the individual who needs the most help? ...or, do we choose the individual who has the best chance at being helped (i.e. having a support system)? Of course, reality is not so black and white. The option of ACS, for example, was brought up with the foster child.
I think we also have to consider the position/perspective of Esperanza. I don't think they're a Vera demonstration project anymore, but their "success" is still important to them as they move forward, however they measure that. If you were the director, wouldn't you, too, choose the child with a support system in place? Data driven approaches to justice may not be ideal, but in order to keep a program afloat and the funding coming in, they may be necessary before reaching the likes of Omar and the more ingrained structural issues.
The first time we did the Esperanza tour with this exercise, I completely screwed up, choosing only kids I thought were a no brainer to succeed. Even in pretend mode, I was thinking about showing off programmatic strengths to get more funding. What a humbling experience to have Jenny and Tracy school me about helping the kids who really need it, regardless of the supposed predictors in their profiles. Jenny said it a few times: no kid deserves to go to prison. They are just kids.
Hi David,
The class was great. Thank you for organizing it.
I really enjoyed the exercise. It made me realize how difficult the process of choosing who to admit into the program is and all the factors to be considered in doing so (such as whether the child has a support system, what offense they committed, etc.). It was definitely difficult deciding which eight out of the twelve kids to keep because the end result meant that four would go to jail, unfortunately. I remember one of our key deciding points in choosing was who had a family to actually go back to. The second deciding factor was determining the circumstances for when we don't accept the child. For example, the child who stole the stickers (I forgot the name). If we didn't select him/her for the program, what would their sentence be and for how long?
In regards to your questions, I believe that having a support system was crucial in our decision making because one of the missions of Esperanza is to work with the family for the kids participating in the program. There needs to be that "family" for the program to actually work and benefit the child. Another reason we considered family was to see if the child had someone to go back to when they go back into the community so they don't go back to street life.
For me, I consider my support system anyone that I am close with who is, essentially, there to support me. This includes my family members, my mentors, my close friends and anyone who is there to advise me and support me through anything.
I want to thank you and your mentor Tiffany and Jenny—hopefully the spelling is correct—for giving a tour of Esperanza and explaining a bit about the organization. Similar to our tour Vera, I was taken aback by how gorgeous Esperanza was.
The exercise highlighted some of the different factors that each of us take into consideration for who Esperanza accept, which, in turn, made it difficult because many of us disagreed on certain views.
For me, I had a bit of trouble with Esperanza’s mission to incorporate family into the decision-making process for whom to accept or not when we first started the exercise. For example, do we only help people who have support systems because it is an easier process? After participating in the activity, I began to understand why some social justice programs cannot save the whole world or fix an entire system. Rather, they need to focus their resources and expertise on measurable outcomes with quick, efficient approaches.
Without a doubt, a support system plays a critical role in providing guidance and stability in one’s life, which, in turns, may deter an individual who has nobody there to temper desire to become deviant. So, an individual have a family did play a role for me—as I came to realize midway through the exercise—because an individual is less likely to reoffend with a support system.
Unfortunately, there are many different public and private institutions that should and can serve as support systems for youth: public schools, religious institutions, non-profits, and similar organizations. However, lack of funding compounded with limited resources prevents public schools from serving a role that they could and should play for youth. As Michelle mentioned, many different individuals can serve as a support system, ranging from an immediate family members to a best friend.
It was a great session at Esperanza, as always. Thanks to David, Tracy and Jenny for putting it together and to all who participated.
It's amazing how specifics matter--how often it turns out that the devil is in the details.
I also left the experience with a question, reinforced by the issues raised in the blog so far: are there programs that address kids who don't have a support system? Remember the very promising teen who by dint of an accident lost his support system all at once--what happens to those children?? Are there programs that target those particular kids, their particular vulnerabilities?
Hey David. Thanks for assisting Esperanza staff and making our trip fun.
To answer your first question, the prime reason why a support system played such a huge role in my decision making process was simply because the program targets youth with a support system. In order to receive real results, we need to target individuals who we honestly believe we can help. We also saw that some youth that could have potentially benefited greatly from the program were not chosen because there was not a place in our program for them. It would seem that the unfortunate reality of the non-profit world is that we cannot save everyone and our simulated program provides truth to this statement.
In response to your second question, a support system needs to provide the youth with some type of stable domestic environment. This can be anyone ranging from parents, cousins, aunts and uncles to coaches, church officials or anyone in a community organization that a person may get involved with. The program targeted these life officias and absent their presence, the long lasting affect of the program was beyond questionable.
David,
Thank you so much for the session at Esperanza! It was great.
I believe that part of the mission of Esperanza is to work and function around family dynamic, especially since young people are not independent but under the guidance (hopefully) of a guardian. We all have support systems, and an integral and necessary one is that of a responsible adult that acts as caretaker.
So, when we were making decisions, it seemed that those with at least some sort of long term guardianship or had someone looking after them, they would be successful in participating in the program. Otherwise we run the risking of wasting resources, and when it comes to issues like these, the risks are just too high. No one wanted to send anyone to jail or prison, but this is part of the reality of social justice, and how systemically we are limited in our ability to help and give youth a chance.
On the flip side, we saw that some of these youth just didn't even deserve to have been arrested. A joy ride, some stickers, small infractions that prison and jail won't help. This brought up an important point to consider in thinking about how big the problem is, and it may be more about police practices than it does about juvenile delinquency.
David,
Thank you so much for the session at Esperanza! It was great.
I believe that part of the mission of Esperanza is to work and function around family dynamic, especially since young people are not independent but under the guidance (hopefully) of a guardian. We all have support systems, and an integral and necessary one is that of a responsible adult that acts as caretaker.
So, when we were making decisions, it seemed that those with at least some sort of long term guardianship or had someone looking after them, they would be successful in participating in the program. Otherwise we run the risking of wasting resources, and when it comes to issues like these, the risks are just too high. No one wanted to send anyone to jail or prison, but this is part of the reality of social justice, and how systemically we are limited in our ability to help and give youth a chance.
On the flip side, we saw that some of these youth just didn't even deserve to have been arrested. A joy ride, some stickers, small infractions that prison and jail won't help. This brought up an important point to consider in thinking about how big the problem is, and it may be more about police practices than it does about juvenile delinquency.
First of all, thanks for the fantastic trip, David.
In response to your question pertaining to the importance of getting family members to partake in the program, the shortened answer would be family environment is a crucial determining factor of adolescents’ wellbeing; and it would be nearly impossible to tackle problems in youths without addressing existing or potential problems in family. However, this principal also has its defects. First of all, it tends to marginalize those without stable and steady family support by not emphasizing alternatives to lack of family care. In other words, this approach is especially inefficient in supporting young people who fall outside of traditional family support network and lack parental or guardian guidance. In an instance like Jon, the foster child who panicked and slashed a store employee after he was caught stealing a headphone, he would not be eligible from the Esperanza’s service though he could benefit tremendously from such alternative sentencing service. Jon’s example reminds me of the limit of resource that constantly places constrains on the battle for social justice. In Jon's case, even though Jenny had express her sincere desire to help this 15 year old child, but she would have no choice but to turn him down if his case was real. (I totally fell in love with Jenny’s personality, by the way!)
The effort to defend social justice is, after all, is not a utopian vision, but a ongoing and realistic struggle that is full of obstructions. On the flip side, this could be seen as a good sigh because obstruction only occurs where progression is being made.
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