Steve Brittain grew up in Bayfield and went to Bayfield schools, then Fort Lewis College. He acknowledges that as a teenager, he did some things that could have gotten him in trouble.
As an adult, he worked for many years in the 6th Judicial District Probation Department in Durango. Until very recently, he was executive director of the non-profit La Plata Youth Services program, which works with referred youth to turn them around from a bad path. He is now their program manager. He spoke in August to the Ignacio Town Board and the Pine River Centennial Rotary Club.
Youth Services operates out of the little A-frame across Main Avenue from Durango High School. It's "a diversion program for kids before they are charged (with a crime) so they don't have a criminal record," Brittain said. "One child in the criminal system is $64,000 a year. I'd rather send the child to Harvard."
Working with kids referred to Youth Services is a lot cheaper, and the success rate is a lot better in terms of preventing repeat offenders, he said.
They get youth referrals from school resource officers, police, and the courts. They do an evidence-based assessment for each kid and create a contract for them to complete and end up with no arrest record.
The contract is created with the child and parents and is tailored to the child's needs as shown in the assessment, including treatment for substance abuse and any trauma experienced. Most include a community service component to give back to the community, Brittain said. Some kids who committed vandalism in Bayfield had to participate in mediation with the victims.
Kids referred from law enforcement have a 90-percent success rate of completing their contracts, most within 90 days, and not re-offending in the next 12 months, he said. The success rate is lower for kids, especially older ones, referred for truancy, because the attendance pattern is deeply ingrained.
"We were uncovering a lot of trauma with these kids during their assessments," he said. These include homelessness, physical abuse, sexual assault, mental illness, and substance abuse. "We've kind of become a safety net for kids who have dropped through the cracks."
Transportation to activities in Durango can be an issue for kids from Bayfield and Ignacio, Brittain said. They have an agreement with Southern Ute Community Action Programs (SUCAP) to transport those kids to activities. Those include summer activities two days a week, "so we don't lose these kids." The summer program includes scheduled activities that the kid can choose, art therapy in the park, and roadside clean-ups. They finish the summer program with a barbecue, raft trip, and activities at Purgatory.
He said he'd like to have an office in Bayfield Town Hall and do programs here, including the summer program, graffiti removal, and useful public service. Brittain also would like to do a year-round program working with SUCAP and a snowboarding program for kids nominated by their schools, who are at risk of failing. That will depend on funding.
Brittain said one of his passions and a focus of Youth Services is kids who are chronically truant from Ignacio, Bayfield, or Durango schools. It's more than not going to school, he said. It can reflect mental health issues in the student or the student's parents, as well as homelessness or substance abuse.
Brittain cited one girl who was teased at school because she dressed poorly and smelled bad. Her family was homeless. Her mom had no car and a bunch of other kids. "We bought her some new clothes and a rec center pass so she'd have a place to shower." But that didn't stop the teasing, so they got her into the Southwest Board of Cooperative Services online school, and now she is at Fort Lewis College.
Youth Services works with three law enforcement agencies, the three school districts, county human services, and Axis Health to share resources and meet kids' needs, Brittain said.
With Brittain in Ignacio was Jason Cole, attendance case worker for Ignacio Schools.
Cole said, "State law requires creation of a team to work with habitually truant students. We're just starting to scratch the surface." Dillon Walls is the new youth advocate in Bayfield. "I think that will make a huge difference because of the perception that services from Durango are for Durango."
Brittain said they got a research grant to interview people who were expelled or had dropped out of school. "They said if anyone had given a hill of beans about me, they would have stayed," he said. "They all said they were having trouble at home. They went to school to find someone to talk to. When they didn't find anyone, they went to their peers and didn't find anyone, so they dropped out. They were looking for one person who cared in their life."
Brittain said they are working with Denver University School of Social Work interns to work with kids in grades 6-7 and 8-9 "where we lose so many kids." He asserted, "Our job is to never give up on these kids."
He lamented, "We're trying to address the truancy problem way too late, when they're 16 and have been disengaged from school for several years" and they've accumulated zero high school credits toward graduation. The success rate is a lot higher with younger kids, he said.
Brittain said the DeNier Youth Detention Center in Durango is operating well below bed capacity and is being eyed as a place for kids who now have no place to live, such as homeless kids and runaways, kids with emerging mental health issues, kids coming back from being in the juvenile justice system, or who are transitioning out of foster care when they turn 18, with no life skills and no place to go. This would be temporary shelter to assess their needs and set up a plan to meet those needs. It would not be detention.
Legal recreational marijuana for adults has complicated things, Brittain said. It "has presented awkward issues when parents come in higher than their kids." Youth Services uses a harm reduction model with young users, to reduce and delay marijuana use, as opposed to "Just say no," which he said doesn't work.
"Kids experiment with everything," Brittain said. "We're trying to give them good factual information, give them tools, refusal skills, to slow down or delay use." He cited a statistic of an eight point drop in IQ for daily marijuana use starting at age 14.
Cole said he referred nine youths from Ignacio to Youth Services for this. "They appreciate having that, a person speaking to them honestly about marijuana use."
Youth Services depends on grant funding from private foundations, the Department of Education and Division of Criminal Justice, as well as community service funding from Ignacio, Bayfield, Durango, and the county.
