Damarion was 15 when he got in trouble. Big trouble. If he were a few years older, it would have been a felony with a chance of jail time.
But instead, he and his brother had access to and volunteered to participate in a new program – one that seeks to not just put kids on the right path but to cut that path, help them pave and start walking down it.
Now Damarion, whose last name is not being included in this story due to his age, is 16, and he's is looking at college.
"There's a lot of options for me, but I might become an engineer," he said.
Nate Lett is the program director for the Hamilton County Youth Advocate Programs. YAP, as it is called, is a national nonprofit operating in over 100 communities across the country.
"We believe we got a solution here," Lett said.
Youth Advocate Programs: What it's all about
YAP began in 1975 in Pennsylvania. The initial goal of the program was to provide an alternative to incarceration and keep children safely at home. While that remains the primary focus, Hamilton County juvenile court was drawn to the program as an intervention for high-risk youth.
Since launching in Hamilton County in Jan. 2020, 97% of the youth participants were not convicted of a new offense while in the program and 76% regularly attended school or had completed school at the time of discharge.
These statistics are consistent with the national statistics other YAP programs have received. While many teens in Hamilton County would be eligible for the program, funding is needed to expand the program.
Juvenile Court Magistrate Carla Guenthner said these results are a big improvement considering that the alternative for many high-risk, high-need teens is a placement in a juvenile detention facility or other residential, locked-down program.
She said nearly all of the teens who were placed in the program has felony offenses and many of those offenses involved guns.
Lett described how it works:
- Juvenile judges and the probation division pick teens to refer to the program, typically Black teen boys facing felony charges and right now those teens are mostly from Westwood and North Fairmount.
- Court officials said that Black teen boys are the focus because once they enter the justice system they often struggle with typical intervention; they often slip through the cracks.
- A wide-ranging assessment is completed evaluating the teen's strengths and weaknesses as well as how things are going with the youth's family. As many relatives as possible are brought in to support the family.
- The advocate looks at the teen's entire life and has the ability to provide "wraparound" services for everything from transportation to childcare.
- A plan is designed leveraging the teen's strengths in order to work on their weaknesses and they are paired with a paid advocate who lives in their community.
- The program has a range of resources it can offer families, but two involve employment. The teen's advocate will help find the youth a job and YAP will pay the first three months of the teen's pay. The second program is a paid series of workshops that teach the teens about working professionally. Both of these programs give teens a way to make money.
- The youth also participate in classes with their advocates about emotional health, educational achievement, job experience and other topics.
- These advocates are available to these children 24 hours a day because the advocates live in the same neighborhoods.
'It was easy, for real'
Onyango Collier was Damarion's advocate. He has worked for Beech Acres, another social service agency, and Cheviot schools.
Damarion and the other youth he works with all call him Mr. O.
He was excited to join the program because of its holistic approach.
"We recognize it is a family issue when youth find themselves wayward," Collier said. "We try to assist the whole dynamic."
Collier took Damarion to the gym and out to eat. He would often just stop by their house to check-in. Together, they read the book "Competing as a Lifestyle You vs. You" by LaMarque Ward, an educator and speaker who also grew up in Cincinnati.
"It was really easy," Damarion said. "It really got us out of trouble. Instead, we were going with Mr. O and doing stuff that helped us. It was easy, for real."
Collier and Damarion would talk a lot about goals, something Damarion said he had never really thought about before.
With Collier's help, Damarion also got hired at nearby Taco Bell, a job he still has.
Collier said YAP has a lot of different resources for kids and connects youth to what they need.
"If they want it," he said, "it's there for their success."
Crisis-driven anti-violence intervention
It was 11 o'clock at night when a YAP advocate heard about a shooting in an apartment complex last year. One of the advocate's teens lived there, so the response was immediate. The advocate met with the family and checked to make sure the teen was safe and wasn't involved.
"It's crisis-driven, 24/7," Guenthner, the juvenile court magistrate, said. "They are out in the field day and night."
Hamilton County Juvenile Court officials filed a proposal with the Georgetown Center for Juvenile Justice Reform in 2019 to bring YAP to the area. The court had worked with the center before.
A $400,000 grant from the Safely Home Fund provided a year's worth of funding.
This provided services for a couple dozen kids, mainly in two neighborhoods – COVID-19 was a limiting factor. The money also went toward set up costs and hiring administrative staff to handle all the work behind the scenes like finding advocates.
Judge Melissa Powers said the juvenile court and YAP itself is working to secure funding to keep things going.
Powers said they are using Department of Youth Services “reclaim” dollars meant to prevent kids from going into custody to help.
Officials are also working with to get YAP recognized as an “evidence-based” by Ohio to get more funding. It is already recognized as such by the federal government. YAP is also seeking funding on its own.
Court officials say the program is ready to scale and grow. YAP could also be a resource for other agencies. They could accept referrals from Job and Family Services, police agencies and other social service programs.
Steve Best works for the juvenile court probation office. He’s currently assigned all the cases for YAP participants. Powers said he “got a way of connecting with kids differently.”
"Some of our parents are overwhelmed,” Best said. “They just need, not only support, they need some guidance on how to put supports in place."
He said YAP's wraparound approach helps with this. He said the advocates work with the whole family – aunts, uncles, grandparents – to identify everyone who is supporting the family and bring them all to the table.
In group sessions, they talk about the issues in the home and the community. Best is in these meetings.
"We listen to what they're telling us,” Best said. "They have a lot of exterior things going on at home and in the community. They are trying to shoulder a lot of responsibility that they probably shouldn't have to at their age. We try to lift some of that pressure off of them.”
Best has worked in juvenile probation for 18½ years. He said finding advocates in the community makes the whole process more genuine.
“Other programs have come and gone,” Best said. “Very few, if any, have been this committed and this involved with families.”
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