Youth Services of Bryan County is expanding its services to help children and families in Bryan County.
The agency was founded in 1971 when then-Judge Pat Phelps saw a need for an alternative program for children who came through juvenile court. Youth Services houses children that are in the custody of the state.
“We’re kind of an emergency shelter meaning that typically these kids don’t have any other resort,” said Shawn Young, program director for Work Ready Durant, which is the umbrella youth services is working under after receiving a grant “It’s kind of last minute and so we place them and typically, we’ve got two different shelters. Our resource shelter, the kids are not permanent but they’re here a little more. They can go to school and kind of have somewhat of a normal life.
“Our emergency shelter across the street, however, are children that are only placed with us for two weeks at a time. They’re temporary until the state can find them something a little more permanent, either another shelter or back to the family or foster care, whatever that looks like for each individual child.”
Late last year, Youth Services was provided with an opportunity to write a grant from Public Strategies, which is managing the Work Ready program that is from the Familyhood Initiative throughout the state, according to Young. The $6.1 million grant over five years was awarded and Youth Services is now working out of the Work Ready program.
“Basically, they’re looking for different ways to impact the family,” Young said. “Youth Services has a very wide reach within that demographic. So, we are working with kids whose families may be in chaos or something tragic has happened. They’re working through issues. We’ve got a very wide reach within that demographic.
“We wrote this grant that they asked us to write and were awarded the contract. So, Youth Services is like the main institute for this contract with the state and Work Ready is the contract that we’re working under.”
The grant was written by Young and Courtney Dukes, who is the executive director of Youth Services.
“Work Ready is geared towards the unemployed, the underemployed and anybody that might be eligible for state subsidies,” Young said. “We work with veterans as well as people that are being mitigated or migrated back into society after incarceration and so we also have people that are just wanting to do better in their lives.“ Young was originally in Youth Services and has worked in human resources.
“I had done lots of adult education and so us writing for this (grant) was just a natural connection because while yes, we are focused on youth and we want to help the youth, we also know that you can’t just help one demographic and it be okay,” she said. “You’ve got to help the whole family unit and so while we may be Youth Services, we’re really branching out and helping the whole family.”
Youth Services also received about $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds after COVID that is being used to fund the expansion of facilities, according to Young.
“We’re adding conference rooms, some additional offices and storage space as well as a very large recreation room for children in the hopes that we can expand our reach and do things like community events or after-school programs,” Young said. “That’s a big piece of what we’re going to be doing with that expansion as well as. We’ve gained additional staff so that we can provide more services to our families and counseling to families and individuals, youth in our community, and then a big piece of that is Work Ready.”
She said that for the most part, the shelter has been on a need to know basis.
“You knew where the shelter was if you needed it or you knew of our counseling programs if you needed it but we’re really expanding and getting our reach out there so that we can help more people,” Young said. “We want people to know and be proactive. We don’t want them to wait until they’re in that situation and, we want to be proactive and help them.”
Youth services has a summer youth program where four days a week for about four hours per day, children in the community are taken by counselors to different places such as the Choctaw Cultural Center, Young said.
“They’re getting that oneon- one time with counselors, but they’re also learning things about themselves and how to mitigate problems and behaviors,” Young said. “That’s another way that we’re really reaching out to the community.”
Young said that getting the organization’s name out there will give families resources they may not have been aware of so that when parents start seeing issues with their children, they can come to Youth Services for help.
For many of the shelter children, they could be there because of being removed from the home, there was abuse or neglect or the children have behavior problems and the parents don’t know how to control them anymore, so they end up in the system, according to Young.
At one of the shelters, the children can live a somewhat normal life and attend school.
“In the year and a half I’ve been here, I’ve seen three children age out and so we will work to get them a plan for moving into society,” Young said.
This is how the Work Ready program will come into play.
Young said Work Ready, that will be located at 1001 W. Main St., is going to have its first set of workshops in September that will allow people in the community to receive help in finding employment.
“So, we’re not just trying to put them in jobs, we want to prepare them for a career,” Young said. “During that weeklong workshop, we can do everything from personality assessments … we will do problem solving, decision making, communication skills, how to dress for a job as well as helping them develop resumes and we’ll have professional resume writers that will make that look fantastic.
“We really focus on the their superpowers so to speak to really highlight what they’re really good at. We go through interviewing skills so we will do mock interviews with them. One really cool thing about Work Ready is that they connected with legitimate remote workers or remote businesses across the state. So, we will have a pool of remote jobs for these people to work from.”
Young expressed enthusiasm about the programs from Youth Services and Work Ready.
“My motto is, the further our name and brand gets out there, the bigger our reach,” she said.
