A Christian Facility, Young Life Dale House Project

OVERVIEW

The Dale House is a Christian community in the context of a residential facility ministering to runaway, throwaway, and troubled youth (821 North Cascade, Colorado Springs, CO 80903). It offers "residents a healthy family atmosphere while helping residents to help themselves." It is the staff''s hope that, through loving relationships, they will ''affect kids'' lives by bringing them in touch with the "great Healer," Jesus Christ.''

The Dale House has been in operation for twenty years and their "approach to healing is one which emphasizes the ''family'' and relational ''community'' aspects of the program." Beginning as a shelter for runaway and homeless youth, Dale House is now also a licensed residential group home. The staff build relationships with the residents in order to share the Christian faith with them. It is important to balance the roles of parent and friend; confrontation and loving tolerance; work and fun; and accountability, freedom, and trust. Dale House provides a loving structured family environment in which each resident is given responsibility and freedom.

PROGRAM GOALS

Each resident, with clinical social workers, agrees on treatment contracts and goal setting (i.e, reunification with family and personal relationships, drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, education, employment, health and hygiene, counseling, restitution payments, and independent living). The resident''s length of stay depends on individual goals and one''s achievement of these goals. Some residents stay as long as a year while others stay only two months. The program is more effective the longer one stays.

The Dale House staff assist the resident with encouragement, support, and accountability toward reaching his or her goals. The housing goals for the youth are to "return home, move into a healthy productive situation of independent living, or another healthy alternative." The relational goals for the youth are that they would develop healthy ways to communicate their needs and feelings, learn healthy means of conflict resolution, respect themselves and others, and build healthy relationships.

PROGRAM METHODS

Each resident enters the program through an intake interview in which he or she learns of the program''s expectations and establishes specific goals and treatment plans. Each is assigned a primary staff counselor who works closely with each resident toward the achievement or his or her goals. There are strict Dale House rules and policies:

• Residents will work on their goals and are accountable for their time.
• Residents are expected to be in by curfew.
• Meals are to be attended by all at promptly 6:00 p.m.
• Everyone has chores to do at the house during the week; Saturday is the primary housecleaning day.
• There are two family nights each week that each resident is expected to attend (one is an activity, the other is a time in which the staff shares their faith with the residents).
• There will be no physical or verbal violence, no weapons, no drugs or alcohol, and no sex.
• If at any time a resident does not follow the rules and treatment contract, he or she is accountable to negotiate the consequences for misbehavior. Residents are told that Dale House is not a boarding house, but a community in which they bear responsibility.

PROGRAM OPERATION

The Dale House administrative and management functions are run through association with Young Life and under the organizational leadership of the Young Life national organization. The staff include a director, administrative assistants, clinical social workers, permanent leadership staff, and training staff. The director, administrative assistants, clinical social workers, and permanent staff all receive salaries from the project. The budget is raised from Department of Social Services monthly fees per resident, institutional support, and individual support. The project provides room and board for the leadership and training staffs. The training staff are expected to raise their own support for personal expenses. The project owns four houses, all purchased through grants. These house the training staff, permanent leadership staff, two residents'' apartments, two independent living apartments, the main community area, and the administrative offices.

PROGRAM TESTIMONIES

The 1990 statistics for the Dale House termination status (where kids went to when they left the program) follow:

It is hard to determine success from these figures. The meaning of success is different for each young person. One particular resident left for a correctional institution and then on to job corps training. The program became unable to help her, while the correctional institution provided her with what she needed at that time. A failure includes a 15-year-old boy who had been shuffled between relatives until there were no more relatives willing to take him. After six months at Dale House, he ran away.

It is important to provide these youth boundaries and structure, but balance is the key. The project needs to be consistent and stable, but open to modification as necessary. Each individual is treated and respected as an individual. Each resident bears responsibility and enjoys freedom. The program does not implement a point or level system of discipline (many residential child care facilities do). The philosophy is that "if responsibilities are ignored in attitude or actions, appropriate consequences need to be given, usually resulting in less freedom for the resident." Some kids function well under this system; others have previously functioned under the level system and are uncomfortable with their freedom at Dale House. For these individuals, it takes time and some failure to adjust to the responsibility and freedom system.

1. Youth need love and affection in order to develop a healthy sense of self-image and esteem. Many do not receive the attention they desperately need to help them develop into healthy, functioning, maturing, independent adults.
2. Youth workers can help troubled youth by establishing healthy, caring communities to provide a safe, stable environment in which young people can learn basic life skills, receive education, learn that they have worth, can grow in a faith, and receive encouragement and hope.
3. Dale House is a good model of ministry to troubled youth. Troubled youth need relationships with adults who are willing to provide them with boundaries, structure, responsibility, freedom, encouragement, and hope.

Jennifer A. Seery cCYS