Submitted by: Chloe Zarco
Only six months after joining Jonathan’s Place, CEO Allicia Frye saw the repercussions young women faced after leaving the Girls Treatment Program at 18 years old without necessary preparation. Pregnant, fearful and full of regret, the young adults, who had no choice but to grow up fast, often say they wish they had listened to the counselors the first time around.
“We look at our program and we know we’ve been able to keep these girls from getting pregnant during the time that they were here,” Frye said.
Joy Banks, manager of Residential Programs, recalled being directly contacted by young women who previously were a part of the Girls Treatment Program.
“There are a lot of stories that have happened here with the past girls when I first started,” Banks said. “They’d call me and are just like, ‘Hey Ms. Joy, What do I do? What do I do? I should have listened to you. I wish I could have just listened to you whenever you first talked to me but I wasn’t trying to have it.”
What Frye and Banks saw inspired them to reevaluate their approach, aiming to prevent further instances of poor decision making among young women who have “aged out” of the program, a term used to identify when the state will no longer support children in the system.
Frye and her staff began conversations about developing a new project, the Transitional Living Program, which would focus on teaching every young woman how to live a healthy and successful life on her own.
“As soon as the Girls Treatment Program began and girls started to stay longer, I started thinking about what was going to happen to these girls when they turned 18,” Frye said.
According to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, one in five foster children will be homeless after the age of 18, one-half will be unemployed by the age of 24, and 71 percent will be pregnant by age 21. These statistics alone were enough to make the organization’s board push to start a program focused on the transition between childhood and young adulthood.
“What we run into with children who have been in the child welfare system is that everything has been handed to them. Everything has been given to them because you are trying to care for them,” Frye said.
Frye and her team intend for this program to function as an educational tool to help these women develop skills that they did not learn while they were in the welfare system.
“We are going to focus on things such as teaching these girls how to maintain healthy relationships, what are good work and study habits, how to set realistic goals by using a planner, as well as things such as budgeting and paying bills,” Frye said.
Jonathan’s Place will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2016 and the Transitional Living Program will be introduced in December. The program will occupy the currently vacant Mike Modano cottage, housing 12-16 girls, ages 18-22.
The current campus consists of three cottages, a lodge and a service center. The Mike Modano cottage formerly served as additional housing for the emergency shelter, such as when there was a spike in the amount of children being removed from their homes in 2003. Frye explained that within a year or two of the expansion, the government changed direction and began placing more children directly into foster care rather than taking them to a shelter and transitioning them in
to foster care. This resulted in a decline in numbers for Jonathan’s Place.
“Because the number of children had plummeted, we decided to consolidate our shelters into one because our numbers had dropped so low we didn’t need two shelters. Even with the consolidation, we still had this vacant shelter, the Mike Modano cottage,” Frye said.
Since this empty cottage was unused, it accelerated implementing the program, making it that much easier to develop and turn into a physical reality. The young women coming out of the Girls Treatment Program will now be able to stay onsite in the cottage to be part of the Transitional Living Program once they turn 18.
“We are raising these girls,” Frye said. “I tell them all the time, ‘We may not look like your normal family, but we’re your family.’”
About Jonathan’s Place: Jonathan’s Place is a non-profit organization based in Garland that operates a shelter for children 17 years old and younger who have been abused or abandoned. It is the only organization offering residential services for children under 10 years old in Dallas County. www.jpkids.org.