Built on the 1100 block of Government Street, Family and Youth Service Center has a basket of programs designed to increase options for young people to help end truancy and reduce crime.
As 225 details in a feature from the current issue, those programs include THRIVE, a residential program; the drug abuse education program known as D.A.R.E.; the Baton Rouge Police Department’s missing persons division; the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination project; Children’s Crime Victims Services; and Triumph Kitchen, a food industry training center.
For director Roxson Welch, Family Youth and Service Center’s goal isn’t to treat truant teens in isolation. Rather, the center works with family members on the bigger picture of influences at home.
“Kids who are truant, it’s the very first sign that there’s trouble,” Welch says. “Our objective is to get in there and find out why. Just moving that [phrase], from ‘problem child’ to ‘child with a problem,’ changes your entire way of looking at this kid. And it also changes the entire way of addressing what those problems are.”
Though Welch is a leader in keeping the center’s gears in motion, she’s quick to share credit with its many partners. She says the key to engaging a student is finding out what makes them tick—a hobby, a skill, an interest.
“Here, everybody is interested in the betterment of the kids,” she says.
