Families in Action Helps Teens
Get Back on Track

 by Diana King

Teens build self-esteem and a sense of belonging to their community by taking part in projects such as Pelicans on Parade. Working under the direction of artist David Fox, right, the teens designed the mosaic covering their pelican. Then they cracked, glued and grouted the tile. The colorful bird is one of 80 pelicans (the state bird) displayed in front of the Lafayette Parish District Courthouse.		The bailiff escorts a 16-year-old girl accused of shoplifting and her mother into the hearing room. Although one of the conditions of participating in Teen Court is admission of guilt, the girl displays a defiant attitude and claims to have been the unwitting foil of her less virtuous companions. She says she doesn’t know how stolen merchandise got into her purse. Her mother sits quietly, answering questions in a soft voice. Her eyes are mostly downcast. They occasionally fill with tears. “Does your daughter observe her curfew?” The prosecutor asks.
		“No,” she says softly. The girl challenges this, too, and accuses her mother of neglect. The two are escorted from the room by the bailiff and the jury begins to discuss the case heatedly, often loudly. “Did you see her roll her eyes?” one girl asks. They don’t buy her story. (Judy Stanford, Staff Writer The Daily Advertiser, Lafayette, LA)

Whether she knows it or not, today this Louisiana teen has luck on her side. Luck and a far-sighted, compassionate community have brought her into the Teen Court Program serving the 15th Judicial District Parishes of Lafayette, Acadia and Vermillion.

Lafayette, located about 200 miles west of New Orleans, is one of over 800 communities in the United States that has created a special court for first-time offenders between the ages of 10 and 16. It’s a second chance and an opportunity to get their lives back on track. Cases are decided by teenage volunteers, many of whom were also first-time offenders. The judge is an adult volunteer, often a member of the Young Lawyers Association.

If this teen fulfills her sentence of 24 Teen Court sessions, 75 hours of community service, tutoring, attendance at classes on family strengthening, self-esteem and goal-setting and keeps her curfew (7:30PM on weekdays and 9:30PM on weekends), she will avoid prosecution and her record will be wiped clean. Now it’s up to her.
And her mother.

Parents whose children appear in Teen Court are required to attend family strengthening classes. “Most of these parents are at their wit’s end,” says Teen Court Administrator Linda Anson, “and we find that they need to learn new skills for working with their children.

Creating Positive Change at Home
“We are using the Families in Action program because it helps both the child and parent get on the same wavelength,” explains Anson, who admits to struggling with her own teenage daughter many years ago. “I had good intentions, but I had a lot to learn about parenting,” she recalls. She notes that the family strengthening classes are required at the beginning of the program, because without significant and positive changes in the home environment, nothing else will have a lasting effect.

“When parents come into the program, they are closed up and think they are alone in the problems they are having with their child. But as we watch the videos and discuss the situations, the moms and dads start opening up. They begin looking at situations from other points of view and ultimately they grow and develop new ways of parenting their children.

“After just a few weeks in the Families in Action program, these parents begin to see that their child is a separate, unique person and not just their child. As they realize that their sons and daughters live in the ‘home’ world and a very different ‘outside’ world of neighborhood, school, and peer influences, they become more willing to listen to their child before making decisions.”

“Then we hear the kids start saying, ‘Now my mom and dad are beginning to understand how I think and that I’m not always wrong’,” adds Jennifer Richard, Teen Court Coordinator for Vermillion Parish. “And the kids begin seeing that each parent is also an individual person dealing every day with many responsibilities and stressful situations at home and at work.”

Learning to Convey a Loving Attitude
“Most importantly, throughout the program we are teaching the parents that their primary job is letting their child know through their words and actions just how important he or she is to them,” says Nakia Hamilton, Teen Court Coordinator for Lafayette Parish. “Many of these parents are so busy giving orders and going about their business that they do not convey a loving and caring attitude that is so important in creating a family that communicates and works together.”

“We also require both the parent and child to write a letter of encouragement,” Anson adds. She collects the parents’ letters and mails them to the children, believing that having the letter arrive in the mail makes it especially meaningful. The kids write letters to themselves about their good qualities and list their goals for the next year and five years in the future. Six months after they complete the program, she mails the letter to them as a reminder that they are lovable and capable of
reaching their goals.

Referrals to the program continue to grow because teens going through the comprehensive Teen Court Program show a much lower recidivism rate than those who go through the court system. To date the recidivism rate is less than one percent for juveniles and two percent for adults.

Preventive Measures
As a preventive measure, Anson also offers Active Parenting Today classes to parents of at-risk children referred by the schools, police, child protective services, hospitals and public housing. In over 11 years of working with families, she has found that in many cases children are acting out and getting into trouble because they don’t know how to deal with feelings of grief due to death, divorce, or incarceration of a parent. “We identify these kids and pull them into another class using the Windows: Healing and Helping Through Loss program. It helps them understand and express their feelings and learn that while they have a right to grieve and be angry, it is not OK to inflict this anger on others or destroy themselves.”

As Anson, Richard, and Hamilton work daily on the front lines to turn around the lives of these teens and parents, their community has voiced its approval by providing grants through the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, Interest on Lawyers Trust Account (IOLTA) of the Louisiana Bar Association, Governors Safe and Drug Free Schools, and Lafayette Consolidated Government. The 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has worked diligently with the Teen Court Program by providing referrals and applying for grants.

Reprinted from Leader magazine.
Copyright 2001 by Active Parenting Publishers, Inc.