Loving Arms Spokane Groups Want To Help Kids Grow Up With Love And Protection

All too frequently we are jolted from our easy chairs with headlines that really hurt.

Rebecca Hedman’s murder on Oct. 17, 1993, created such a headline. “Becca” was a 13-year-old runaway who was killed on our streets.

The murder and violence affecting several teens this past summer created similar headlines. As the hurt from these children’s deaths subsided, many of us simply went back to the easy chair, still sad, but mostly relieved that Becca and the others weren’t teens that we knew.

A number of people in Spokane, however, were not content with going back to the chair after Becca’s death. They decided to take her memory home, day after day. They have posters with Becca’s picture in their offices.

They decided that Spokane needs to do something different about the way we raise our kids.

These people, mostly volunteers, got together and decided that one big difference between what we have been doing and what we need to do is a commitment to prevention. They decided to try a new approach that focuses on how to raise healthy children, rather than on how to help children who are already in trouble.

The new approach is based in part on a process called “Communities That Care.”

Truly, it was born from Rebecca Hedman’s death, which prompted the Downtown Rotary to commission a study called the Street Kids Report.

This report, compiled and written by local researcher Dan Baumgarten, listed five recommendations, one of which was a “sustained youth development strategic planning process.” In other words, a new way to raise our kids that focuses on development rather than intervention.

About 400 people, calling themselves “Breakthrough,” formed in 1993 to help select such a process.

In 1994, Communities That Care was selected as that process and out of it emerged a working group known as the Community Prevention Board, members of which were appointed by Mayor Jack Geraghty, County Health District Director John Beare, Spokane School Superintendent Gary Livingston, United Way Executive Director Jose Pena, Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce President Rich Hadley and former Spokane County Commissioner Skip Chilberg.

The same year, the Washington Legislature enacted the 1994 Youth Violence Reduction Act, creating the Spokane Community Network, a board of local volunteers, to address family and youth problem behaviors. The Network process eventually will recommend how state resources should be channeled to deal with local problems.

Now, two local structures - the Community Prevention Board and the Community Network - are in place to address family and youth problems, whether youth violence, teen pregnancy, drug abuse or domestic violence. Their shared purpose has led to a strong collaboration between them.

Their respective boards also have been working with Spokane County’s leaders in youth services to balance prevention efforts and intervention efforts in the county. They know the sad reality that, as a community, we are far better able to touch the life of a child by helping him or her in the early years than by intervening once or twice during the teen years.

Few would doubt that Spokane County is a community that cares about its youth. But right now we are out of balance. We have focused so much of our energy on intervention that we have neglected prevention.

After all, prevention is not very glamorous and is not as tangible as, for example, more police or bigger juvenile detention centers. This isn’t to say those things are bad ideas, only that we also need to keep sight of prevention efforts.

Prevention will not replace intervention. But if it is successful, it will ease the load intervention efforts now must bear.

Because prevention efforts are long-term, it’s often harder to measure their success. One of the strengths of Communities That Care and the Network process is that both are based on measurable research.

In that way, these prevention strategies are like the approach the medical community used to reduce heart disease in this country.

They identified and publicized proven risk factors such as a high-fat diets or smoking. They did the same with protective factors such as exercise or a high-fiber diet.

Not so many years ago most of us didn’t make very good choices about the risk factors that affected our hearts. We didn’t know about them.

Now, however, we are a more educated public. More people are making wiser decisions. And heart disease is down.

That’s the direction the Community Prevention Board and the Network will lead us as we deal with our youth and with problem behaviors such as violence, drug abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy and school drop-outs.

We will take a county inventory of the risk factors that research shows are associated with those behaviors.

For example, we can tell through law enforcement statistics and other data whether drugs are more readily available than normal in this community - a risk factor known to contribute to substance abuse. School enrollment, attendance and drop-out figures give us a picture of how many youngsters may not be committed to school, a risk factor that contributes to several problem behaviors.

We also will look at protective factors that make youngsters resilient.

If we help them avoid the risk factors that tempt them, children will be more likely to grow up healthy and wise.

We will not need to intervene as much because we will have prevented problem behaviors.

Communities That Care and the Network have one major goal: a comprehensive written plan focused on reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors. This plan will present data on risk factors in such a way that we can set priorities and monitor our progress.

Of course, not every child will avoid problems. But the more protectors and the fewer risks, the better chance a child will have to be healthy, happy and wise.

In the coming weeks, the Network and Community Prevention Board will present a risk assessment inventory to community groups, policy makers and others who want to be involved in this prevention effort. Priority risk factors will be identified.

In late February, new programs will be identified that focus on the priority risk factors and prevention factors. The comprehensive plan will be more than merely an inventory of problems. Instead, the plan will suggest new programs and revisions to existing programs. It is meant to be used, not put on a shelf.

Most important, the success or failure of those programs will be judged in about two years when another risk assessment is done. At that time we hope to see that the measurable risk factors are being reduced. The volunteers who are committed to Communities That Care and the Network have an abiding sense of accountability to the children and families in Spokane County and look forward eagerly to such success.

MEMO: Anne-Marie Axworthy is co-chair of the Spokane Community Network. Paul Clay is chair of Communities That Care. Judith Mason is director of community development for the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce and director of Leadership Spokane.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WANT TO HELP? If you want to be involved in this process, call either Dan Jordan, Community Prevention Board membership chairman, at 456-7111, ext. 215, or Carol Darby, executive director of the Community Network, at 448-6962.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Anne-Marie Axworthy, Paul Clay and Judith Mason Special to Perspective