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Photo By Chris Charlson
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Duncan Campbell, founder of Friends of the Children,
plays a game with Cheyanne Hernandez and Xavier
Turnbow.
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Friendship might be the key ingredient in a child's life, but it must start early and remain consistent to be truly effective.
Friends of the Children is an agency that pairs full-time mentors with seriously at-risk young children to give them support and guidance.
Full-time staff working as friends provides definite advantages, according to Barbara Manuel, interim program director of the Cincinnati office of Friends of the Children.
"Not taking anything away from volunteer mentors, but often they don't have the time and the consistency," she says. "What we're trying to do is to change children's lives by having a person to stay with them even when they're having problems with family or with school. They know there will always be one person who's going to be with them throughout."
The key is stability, with friends entering a child's life around first grade and continuing all the way up through the 12th. The organization assigns no more than eight children to each staffer and pairs same sexes together.
Teachers or school administrators, not parents, recommend children for the program. Assessment takes about six weeks, including interviews with the children and their families and observation of classroom behavior.
"If there's a child in a class who's acting up, who's jumping up and down, that would be a child we would gravitate to," Manuel says.
Other key factors include having parents who were incarcerated or have had substance abuse problems, exposure to severe marital conflict, poverty or neglect. Manuel says the goal of the organization is to keep families together by adding extra support.
Tammy Klosinski says the program has changed the lives of both her and her daughter Cheyanne, 8.
"My daughter was having issues with her biological father being an absent parent," she says. "There always was this void. Her teacher noticed she was having trouble in school and recommended her for the program."
The program has not only improved Cheyanne's performance at school but also provided activities the family would never be able to afford, Klosinski says. Cheyanne gushes when she speaks of her friend, Jennifer Sullivan.
"I love her," Cheyanne says. "We do all kinds of fun stuff."
Sullivan and Klosinski have also developed a strong friendship. "They talk on the phone for hours and hours and hours," Cheyanne says. "I have to say, 'Come on.' "
Sullivan, who has been with the local chapter since its beginning, sums up her role as a friend, a calling she says she was born to do. "What does it encompass, being a friend?" she says. "What does it not encompass? It's so far reaching."
She visits her clients' schools but also has to coordinate schedules around their extracurricular activities, including art class, tumbling, soccer and Girl Scouts.
"It's a matter of balancing eight schedules, eight families and my life," Sullivan says. "It's a lot of balancing."
On a recent visit to the local chapter, Duncan Campbell, founder of Friends of the Children, outlined his vision. He pointed to friends such as Sullivan as the answer to how communities can care for their children.
"They won't wait until children are 15 to 18," Campbell said. "They'll care about them at this early age, because they can still change between the ages of 6 and 10 through this relationship."
Campbell seems a natural with children. As the founder squats on the floor to play, it's hard to imagine the man playing a board game and assembling a Sleeping Beauty puzzle is a multimillionaire entrepreneur in the timber industry. But Campbell, the son of alcoholic parents, says his repartee with the children in the program is genuine and heartfelt.
"I was one of these children," he says. "I worked at the juvenile court for four years. I was a child care worker and saw kids come through there and knew 85 percent of them didn't need to be there if they'd just had a friend like this at an early age."
The seemingly well-adjusted kids in the playroom vying for Campbell's attention were identified just three years ago as seriously at-risk. The changes are measurable, according to Arlene Herman, president of Family Services.
"You wouldn't know this by looking at them today, but they were, according to their first-grade teachers, the children who -- without a program like this -- would have no hope for the future," she says.
Sullivan, too, says she sees noticeable changes in her girls.
"It's always the smallest things that I'm astounded by," she says. "Our relationship has kind of developed into this understanding -- they know what's expected from them and they show a lot of respect. Academically I've seen some tremendous improvement, too."
In Portland, Ore., where Friends of the Children began, a 10-year study documented behavioral changes in participants. Results showed 97 percent of the 275 children in the program were still in school, with only 1 percent in the criminal justice system.
Herman says the statistics speak volumes.
"Ninety-six percent of these children are staying out of trouble, and this is why -- because of this consistent, caring relationship with an adult. When our kids encounter challenges, which inevitably they will, they will hopefully have the foundation to remain good children."
Budget constraints have limited growth in the local program, Herman says. Primarily funded by Hamilton County, the organization must petition to renew funding every six months. The constant question of whether funding will be renewed has prevented organizers from hiring new friends and admitting new children.
"We hope to get more stable funding so the program's not in jeopardy," Herman says. "I love this program for many reasons. The most important is that any time you can give a child a future of hope, you've done a wonderful thing for the child, for the child's family and for the community."
Friends of the Children has 11 chapters. For more information, visit www.friendsofthechildren.com.
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