Youth Services and Legislative Leaders Share Views, Breakfast

"More bang for the buck," is what youth services leaders throughout the region would like legislators and the public to think when they hear the words "youth service bureau."

For $757 per youth, per year, youth service bureaus provide prevention, intervention and treatment, Barbara Lockhart, Montville's Youth Services coordinator, said at a legislative breakfast on Wednesday.

 Residential treatment, she said, can cost 100 times that amount.

The idea of early intervention, of addressing issues before they become problems, is a guiding principle of the work the youth services groups perform. It is also an approach that the legislators at the event applauded.

State senators Edith Prague and Andrea Stillman, representatives Tom Reynolds, Kevin Ryan, Ed Jutila and Ernest Hewett attended the legislative breakfast, with youth services representatives from Montville, Waterford, New London, Colchester, Norwich, Griswold, Stonington, East Lyme and Old Lyme.

Kathryn Eyberse, the youth services coordinator in Norwich, brought up the value of prevention.

"Our goal is keeping kids out of higher-risk activities," she said, and many, including Rep. Hewett, agreed.

"I am a strong proponent of putting money in the front end," he said. The consensus in the room was clearly that spending money before the trouble starts saves everybody in the long run.

"I believe you should target women when they're pregnant," Hewett said. "Everyone comes home with that bundle of joy, but believe me, that bundle of joy can turn into a monster."

Hewett, Stillman and others discussed parental education and parental involvement as major factors in keeping young people out of trouble.

Community involvement is also vital, Lockhart said. Montville needed a positive place for kids to go after school – and the Youth Center offers that.

If the youth does get in trouble, juvenile review boards offer an alternative to the juvenile justice system. These vary in makeup throughout the state, but generally they consist of youth services workers, and people from police, courts, schools and other youth-centered groups. They offer "meaningful alternatives to the juvenile justice system," according to the Conn. General Assembly Office of Legislative Research.

"A kid that makes a mistake doesn't need to be in juvenile court the first time he steals a pack of gum," Lockhart said. Juvenile review boards let youth services groups "divert the kid from the juvenile justice system."

A thrust of the meeting was to lobby the legislators on funding levels. Dani Gorman, youth services director for Waterford, said that her office had seen a 48 percent increase in requests for services in the past two years, as the economy has eroded.

While the youth services bureaus would of course like more money, "We want funding to stay where it's at," she said.