There isn’t a lot of good news coming out of Washington these days, but here is some.

Last Thursday, September 25,the United States Senate unanimously approved critical legislation to address problems facing runaway and homeless youths across the country. The legislation, introduced by Senator Leahy last May, will reauthorize key federal grant programs to provide states with grants to help the thousands of homeless young people nationwide.

I testified on this bill, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, back in May when it first came up for reauthorization. So did Michael Hutchins, who was once a homeless youth in our shelter and now works for us as a counselor. Michael and I flew to D.C. to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee about the importance of programs like Spectrum which help runaway and homeless teens. It looked at the time as if the Act would easily be reauthorized, but for four months it was being blocked by some senators. But Senator Leahy would not give up and it is finally being passed.

We are grateful to Senator Leahy, a great advocate for homeless and at-risk youth.

A retired St. Michael’s College professor, John Reiss, was the victim of a shooting yesterday. He was seated at his dining room table at his house in Essex when a stray bullet from someone taking target practice at a nearby property killed him. My wife is a fellow professor at St. Michael’s and the entire college community there is heartbroken.

Professor Reiss was also a volunteer mentor at Spectrum. He mentored a boy named Ben, and a little over a year ago they were our “Match of the Month.” Here is what Deanna Cameron, our volunteer coordinator, wrote about them at the time:

Match of the Month

August, 2007

John Reiss and Ben

For the month of August, we are so pleased to honor John Reiss and his mentee, Ben, for match of the month. In May, this duo celebrated their first anniversary of being a matched pair—CONGRATULATIONS!!!

John and Ben are new to Spectrum’s Mentoring Program having transferred recently from the mentoring program at Essex CHIPs.

A school counselor first referred Ben to receive a mentor. She hoped that Ben could enjoy some one-on-one time with a caring adult. Ben comes from a large family so doesn’t get too much individual time from the adults in his life who care about him. Ben expressed having interest in lots of areas including sports, sledding, riding 4-wheelers and snowmobiles.

John is retired as a professor at St. Michaels College. Looking to give back to his community along with connecting with a young person, John found mentoring to be an ideal volunteer opportunity.

We here at Spectrum look forward to getting to know this pair better in the coming months. Welcome to our program and CONGRATULATIONS on being

Match of the Month!

A sad and tragic thing to happen to such a good person.

A few months ago I wrote about a young man who had been homeless, stayed with us at Spectrum for a few years and then joined the Marines. Last time I saw him, he was visiting us in Burlington after finishing boot camp at Paris Island, and he had a few weeks leave before resuming training. I asked him to write to us wherever he ended up, so we could stay in touch, and he responded he would because, “Spectrum will always be my home in my heart.”

The very sad news is that this young man took his own life three weeks ago. We are all heart-broken at Spectrum. So many people here loved this young man. We are all still trying to piece together what happened, and why he reached such a state of despair and confusion that he felt he needed to do this. The only thing we do know is that he did resume his military training, in North Carolina, and things did not go well there. The details are still quite murky, and he did end up being honorably discharged, but it is clear that it was not a good experience for him at all. Shortly after arriving back in Vermont, he took his own life.

Several Spectrum staff members and I attended the wake for this young man. About a week later someone posted this message on my blog: “Thank you all at Spectrum for being there for him. Thank you for caring. We have very fond memories of him and will never forget him. I wish with all my heart he would have come to us when he needed help.”

I wish the same thing, but at least I am consoled by the fact that I believe this young man did know he was very much loved by those of us at Spectrum.

My wife is a professor at St. Michael’s College and recently she met another professor who disclosed to her that her son resides at the Spectrum SRO (Single Room Occupancy). This is our transitional living program for homeless youth. My wife asked this woman, “How has your son’s experience been at Spectrum?” This woman went on and on about how wonderful the staff have been at Spectrum, and how they have helped her son so much. She particularly noted the volunteer work our staff and youth do with the animals at the Burlington Humane Society. (Our staff started taking kids there about a year ago, as a volunteer project.)

I of course love hearing this kind of spontaneous feedback. It tells me that our staff are as special as I think they are, and that they regularly exhibit incredible kindness and compassion toward those in our care.

Our street outreach team is out every day connecting with homeless youth and giving them everything from sleeping bags and tents to “survival kits” to sandwiches and water. This work is funded by a couple of grants and donations, and we are always struggling to scrap together the dollars we need for outreach. A few weeks ago we were looking at the budget for this and I saw we were spending a lot at Costco to buy cases of bottled water. Since our outreach team connects with over 500 young people during the course of a year, they give out a lot of water, which adds up to a lot of money in Costco’s pocket.

So our new development associate, Stephanie Reiss, wrote a letter to Crystal Rock, which produces Vermont Pure water in bottles. She explained what our outreach team does, how many kids they help and our need for free or reduced price water. So they wrote her back and said they’d donate 15 free cases to us per month for the next 12 months, and if we need more than that in any one month, they’ll sell us a case for $5!!!

This is a tremendous help to us and a true act of generosity by this company, for which we are very grateful.

Chris Bohjalian’s column (“Hitting bottom and bouncing back,” Aug. 10) brings to focus a situation that happens far too often in our state. It is unrealistic to believe that in our small rural state we don’t have youths who face the challenge of having a safe place to call home.

As a legislator I frequently hear about young adults who have no place to call home, or not enough education or training to obtain a job. It would be easy to describe them as lazy or unmotivated or deadbeats, but I have found that many of them ended up on the streets due to situations beyond their control.

Employment opportunities for them and their parents are limited in these economic times. Loss of housing for a family often means moving to a small apartment, or sharing rooms with family or friends, which in turn may cause a 15- or 16-year-old to look for safe shelter elsewhere. Schools often do not have the resources or offer the flexibility that these young adults need to survive in their challenging environment.

Fortunately, as Bohjalian notes, services such as Spectrum Youth and Family Services are available in parts of Vermont to offer structure, education and opportunities with expectations for these young adults. I have observed how organizations like Spectrum make a difference with limited resources. I also have heard testimony about how their staff members network with other organizations to maximize the monies received to support young adults who want to become productive citizens.

If you are fortunate enough to have funds to contribute to worthy causes, I would encourage you to place Spectrum Youth and Family Services at the top of your list.

DON COLLINS

Swanton

Last night my neighbor and IBM volunteer Tim Redmond came over to our group home to BBQ chicken and corn for the 5 boys who live there. Tim and other IBM volunteers built a granite BBQ there a few months ago, and last night he christened it with this delicious meal. You can see the pictures, including the Ben and Jerry’s cake with our thanks to Tim on it. A very nice night, the boys were grateful to him, and I was very impressed with our staff there, and the way they interacted with the boys. It is a tough thing for kids who are only 17 or 18 to be living in a group home instead of in their own family, and there are many reasons things work out this way, but I do think we do it as well as it can be done at this Murray St house. I left there last night feeling good about what we provide there for them, and feeling good about Tim and other volunteers who help us out consistently.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

I received a phone call last night from a woman in Vermont who has a teenage daughter going into senior year of high school. Her daughter’s close friend was recently asked to leave her home by her father, at least that is the story so far, and this 18-year-old is now on her own, so this mother took her in. She’s been there for over a week, and last Friday drove with the girl to Spectrum. They came into our drop-in center, which is open every day of the week now (thank you Rich and Deborah Tarrant for that) and one of our Peer Outreach Workers, Allie Calnan, greeted them. This woman told me that Ally explained how Spectrum works, all the services we offer, and took the two of them for a tour of the shelter.

The girl has decided to stay, at least for the time being, at this woman’s house, but what impressed me so much was the woman’s description of Ally: “great, wonderful, kind, understanding, incredibly helpful, couldn’t have been better.”

That to me is the most important thing of all, that when a complete stranger walks into Spectrum, they are treated that way. It was no surprise for me to hear this about Ally, whom I and her supervisors consider to be a great member of the Spectrum team. It is, however, always reassuring to hear it from an outside perspective.

Dear Friend of Spectrum,

One of the greatest benefits of my job is receiving letters from young people who have been helped by Spectrum, or from their parents, letting me know how well they are now doing and how grateful they are for the help we gave them. It is hard to describe how wonderful it feels to get news like this.

But not all the letters are happy ones. Some are heartbreaking. Like this one I received from a Vermont mother:

Dear Mark,

Today is my late son’s birthday. He would have been 26 years old, but for a tragic accidental overdose of heroin.

He liked to go out to dinner, the little Indian restaurant on North Winooski Ave, Nectar’s, Perry’s or Shanty on the Shore.

This birthday I felt in my spirit that I’d like to fund the boys who live in your Murray Street group home going out to dinner; I hope that the $200 check enclosed will cover it. I’d like those boys to know that they are so precious and valuable. Their lives have great significance and they are recognized for choosing to be involved with the program and working toward a good future for themselves.

The thought of a group of guys going out, having a good meal together, laughing and enjoying themselves will do me good. I wish I could be doing that with my son, but I’m blessed to be able to do this small thing in loving memory of him.

God bless you in your work with the youth of our area.

The work we do at Spectrum is very difficult. It’s great to talk about and celebrate our success. Letters like this, however, remind us that there are still young people out there who, for some reason, never even make it to Spectrum. Perhaps we could have helped them had we only known.

More importantly, a letter like this reminds us of the incredible goodness of people, and how some people are able to act with compassion and kindness even in the midst of great personal pain.

Sincerely,

Mark Redmond

“If you’re a teenager or young adult, how do you know for sure you’ve hit rock bottom? Is it when you’re frustrated because you can’t TiVo the latest installment of “Dancing with the Stars?” Or is it when you realize you just chose not to go to a party so you could stay home instead and post pictures of yourself on Facebook?

Or is it when you’re sleeping outside in the woods near the Burlington waterfront because you’re homeless and 20, and any money you can scrounge up goes to buy cocaine, methadone substitutes, and anti-anxiety drugs? This was precisely where Faith Foley, now 25, found herself in the spring of 2003.

Prior to that, she had, by comparison, been living large: Sleeping on the floor of a hotel in Brattleboro or crammed into a two-bedroom apartment with as many as ten other people. She had hoped things might get better in the Queen City. They didn’t and it was then, as she shivered outside, that the St. Albans native realized what rock bottom really meant. Out of options, she turned to Spectrum Youth & Family Services and trudged from the waterfront to the organization’s shelter on Pearl Street.

“It was very difficult to bring myself to go there,” Foley recalls now. “I liked to believe I was better than Spectrum that I didn’t need them. So I went there with my tail between my legs. But they were great.”

Today Foley is a residential manager at the Spectrum One Stop Shelter, and this December she will receive an associate’s degree from Community College of Vermont. Her long-term plan is to get a four-year diploma and then a master’s degree in social work. She works at the shelter from late afternoon until somewhere around midnight, helping to care for the dozen young adults who are living there. Sometimes that entails giving out medicine and sometimes it means administering a breathalyzer test for alcohol. More often it means talking with them about their lives, and how they wound up homeless in the first place and their plan to get back on their feet. Most of them don’t know her personal history, but when she thinks it will help the teenager, she is happy to share it: “Sometimes I’ll tell them I know it stinks to have to come in at nine o’clock. I know it stinks to have to do a urine screen [to test for drugs]. Hey, I had to do it too, I’ll tell them.”

Foley credits the case workers and therapists at Spectrum for the way her life has turned around: They weaned her from her dependence on drugs, helped her get a job, and encouraged to go to college. “Spectrum makes a huge difference,” she says. “Unfortunately, I think the public just sees a lot of kids hanging out. But we show a transient population that there’s a better way to live. I don’t want to sound like a clich, but we change lives. I’ve seen so many people come through here who are doing valuable things now.”

The hardest part of her job is the reality that she simply can’t help everybody. The shelter has 12 beds and often there are a half-dozen people on the waiting list. “It’s horrible when someone shows up in the middle of winter and we don’t have a bed. I give them food and blankets and refer them to COTS (the Committee on Temporary Shelter), but it’s heartbreaking.”

Moreover, as a result of the weakening economy, in her opinion it’s only going to get worse. Lately, in addition to seeing young adults who are coping with substance abuse or mental illness, Spectrum is seeing young adults who simply can’t pay their bills.

It’s never been easy to be a teenager, and my sense is that in some ways it’s even more difficult now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Fortunately, there are organizations like Spectrum out there and people like Faith Foley who have seen rock bottom and, now, the view from the mountaintop.

Write to Chris Bohjalian care of the Free Press, P. O. Box 10, Burlington, Vt. 05402, or visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com.”