November 20, 2009 |
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Boys Town North Florida changes livesIn a quiet, residential Tallahassee neighborhood, Boys Town North Florida is part of an 80-year-old tradition of service to children and families. Posted: 09.25.09 
COURTESY | BOYS TOWN NORTH FLORIDA TALLAHASSEE | Ask some people to tell you about Boys Town, and you might get a host of answers: Father Flanagan; young boys fighting to stay alive during the Great Depression; the matter-of-fact statement, “He ain’t heavy, Father, he’s m’ brother”; and the iconic photo of a youngster carrying his younger sibling across his shoulders. You might hear stories of youthful rebellion, of survival, of tough love and discipline, but you also would hear stories of love and family, expressions of gratitude and success, and the spirit of a young man or woman who had walked a long, difficult path to success. You would hear a story that more than likely would not have been told without Boys Town. In a quiet, residential Tallahassee neighborhood, Boys Town North Florida is part of an 80-year-old tradition of service to children and families. June Strauss, and her late husband, Theodore “Buddy” Strauss, were among the Tallahassee area residents who saw a need and seized upon Boys Town as a solution. The journey from Boys Town in Omaha, Neb., to Tallahassee and Boys Town North Florida, established in 1983, sometimes seemed as long as the distance between the two locations. “Not only was Boys Town North Florida the first campus in the state, it was the first-ever expansion of the original Boys Town from Omaha,” Strauss said. The agency wanted to expand and sought proposals; the only respondents were the team in Tallahassee and a group from Minnesota. Tallahassee’s first effort “didn’t fly,” Strauss recalled. Boys Town’s director, Father Val Peter, had tried expansion beyond Omaha before and hadn’t been pleased with the results. “He was a little leery of moving off campus.”  COURTESY | BOYS TOWN NORTH FLORIDA Eventually, Tallahassee prevailed; Boys Town purchased some acreage with a house on it and the local fundraising began in earnest. Today, that same site holds five residences; three of them for boys and two for girls. “There was some pressure on us as the first site,” said Kenneth Bender, president and executive director of Boys Town North Florida. But Tallahassee rose to the occasion, he pointed out. “If it didn’t work, we wouldn’t still be here.” Both Bender and Development Director Dena Strickland are proud of the Boys Town model that has contributed so much to that success. “Boys Town offers an up-and-down continuum of care,” Strickland said. “This means that we know that the children will be in the same model regardless of the level of care” they require. “Our goal is to get them in the right place at the right time with the right care,” Bender added. Each family treatment house has “family teachers,” a married couple who care for the residents much the same way biological parents would. It’s their job to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of the Boys Town model. “That model involves teaching family values, healthy relationships and social skills,” Strickland said. “As a result of that model, you can always tell a Boys Town kid,” Bender added. “We teach them five basic skills: How to greet someone, how to follow instructions, how to take ‘no’ for an answer and how to disagree appropriately. They also learn how to be independent by doing chores.” When a child is referred to Boys Town, he or she knows the rules before arriving at the Tallahassee campus. Staff members make it clear that the child will be respectful, study hard, work hard and go to church. “When they come to Boys Town, they have to want to be here,” Strickland said. “They have to write me a letter telling me why they want to be here, what they want to work on,” Bender explained. Issues can range from anger management to learning problems to needing to belong. “We explain to them that even though they might come to us, they don’t have to stay if they don’t want to. We’re not going to keep them against their will. Some of our rules are flexible and some aren’t. For example, if a child tells me he won’t go to church, that’s a deal breaker.” (When it comes to selecting a church, children start out attending services with their house parents. As the child grows or if he or she expresses a choice, that might change later, Bender said.) One of the big lessons a child will learn at Boys Town is constructive conflict management, Bender said. Each house runs on a system of family governance, with weekly family meetings to discuss issues and determine what comes next. Residents learn not only to discuss their problems appropriately and respectfully, but also to listen to others thoughtfully. “The kids get points, both positive and negative, for things they may have done or not done during the week,” Bender said. If they’ve gotten into trouble and an adult has penalized them for their behavior, the decision isn’t etched in stone. If residents want to “appeal” the adult’s ruling, they take it to the family meeting and plead their case. After each session, housemates vote on what should happen, and only then is the decision final.” As might be expected, it takes a large community to support the approximately 30 children who live at Boys Town North Florida. Strickland is grateful to the professionals who provide free orthodontic braces and medical care, as well as “extreme” makeovers for the residences throughout the year, as well as to other donors and volunteers. How does Boys Town North Florida measure its successes? Strickland offered a poignant example. “One of our students recently gave a speech to GTO (a Tallahassee business),” she recalled, “and said he never knew what a family was like until he saw his family teacher playing with his own child. He was able to say that now he knew what he needed to do when he became a dad.”
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