Apr
16
Money lag straps mogul’s programs for troubled teens
Filed Under juvenile justice, privatization | Comments Off
Decades before Florida began inviting private companies to run prisons for teens, legendary businessman Jack Eckerd opened a different kind of program in the woods of Central Florida. With names such as E-Nini-Hassee that evoked the idyllic summer camps of the era, teens in the programs still gather around campfires, build their own rustic shelters and sing grace before dinner. But after years of lean state juvenile justice budgets, even the Eckerd heirs say they no longer have enough money to run effective programs in Florida.
By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
CLEARWATER – Decades before Florida began inviting private companies to run prisons for teens, legendary businessman Jack Eckerd opened a different kind of program in the woods of Central Florida.
He made a fortune building the drugstore chain that bore his name and wanted to invest in programs meant to keep teens out of trouble. The first programs opened in the late 1960s, with names such as E-Nini-Hassee that evoked the idyllic summer camps of the era.
After a streak of high-profile juvenile crimes in the 1990s, Florida leaders increasingly sent teens to expensive correctional facilities with razor wire and clanging cell doors. To offset the costs of locking up more teens, legislators brought in for-profit management companies and froze residential program payment rates for a decade. Several have closed in scandal after children were abused.
But teens in the outdoor programs that Eckerd founded four decades ago still gather around campfires, build their own rustic shelters and sing grace before dinner. Eckerd visited the teens in his programs every year, often in the pair of green corduroy pants that he liked to wear around Christmas, said one of his daughters, Nancy Eckerd Hart.
The programs became his passion, and when they needed more money Eckerd took out his checkbook.
But Jack Eckerd died in 2004 at age 91 and his wife, Ruth, died last year. Their grown children now rely on donations from outside the family — and a state government that has not been as generous as their father. After years of lean budgets for juvenile justice, even the Eckerd heirs say they no longer have enough money to run effective programs in Florida.
Eckerd Youth Alternatives will supplement $21 million in Florida contracts for residential programs with $900,000 in private money this year to run eight residential facilities in the state, but it still runs close to the bone. And though its wages and benefits are among the best in the field, the agency cannot keep most of its young workers for more than two years.
Last year, the nonprofit agency decided to close Vernon Place, a girls program it had run for a decade under state contract.
Eckerd executives thought they could end behavior problems through the program, but only if they could pay for more clinical workers, smaller groups of girls and more time to reach out to parents.
“The state agreed that these were all important things to do, they simply didn’t think they could afford to pay for that,” said Robert McKeagney, chief operating officer of Eckerd Youth Alternatives. “We would still very much like to be working with that group of kids, but we are not going to pretend that we can accomplish certain things without the resources to do it.”
Smaller juvenile justice contractors have made similar decisions, and residential programs across Florida are disappearing. Five programs in Palm Beach and Martin counties that served teens committed by the courts have closed since 2004, most saying they didn’t have enough money to continue.
‘HIGHLY EFFECTIVE’ CAMPS
Eckerd Youth Alternatives is now a national organization, with a variety of programs for children in nine states. Last year, Eckerd ran three of the 14 residential programs statewide that the Department of Juvenile Justice rated “highly effective” in reducing recidivism, based on the low number of graduates who committed crimes in the year after they were released.
One of those was E-Nini-Hassee, the original girls’ program that Jack and Ruth Eckerd founded in 1969.
At the therapeutic outdoor program in Citrus County, which opened the year after a similar program for boys, teens sleep in platform tents they build themselves. They wake up early and clean the bathrooms. Year-round school helps the girls make up for the years they failed or skipped classes. No TV, cursing or makeup is allowed.
But the program isn’t intended to be strictly punitive; the girls play camp games and cut their own yule log for the holidays. Many times a day, they huddle to address a problem. At least once, the girls go on an overnight adventure trip such as hiking the Appalachian Mountains or canoeing on the Suwannee River.
Director Jo Lynn Smith, who started working at the camp in 1985, said many of the girls, even those who don’t succeed, look back on the program as a golden time in their lives. Camp gives them a way to escape drug abuse or problems at home, Smith said. Most are sentenced by the courts, but about a quarter go to the program after struggling in foster care.
Leah, 19, said she felt relieve rather than resentment when sent to E-Nini-Hassee.
“It’s a lot better place than where I was before,” she said. “I was ready to make changes.”
At camp, she said, “I don’t feel any pressure. We all dress the same: cargos, T-shirts and boots. All the same. No one is better than anyone else.”
E-Nini-Hassee is designed to address the underlying reasons the girls are acting out. Many girls sent to the program have been abandoned by their parents or have been sexually abused. One was left in a trash bin when she was a few days old. In one recent count, 13 of the 70 campers were in foster care because the state judged their parents unfit to raise them.
For Leanna, 17, camp became a kind of family.
She grew up in foster care and was adopted at 12. But that fell apart because of her behavior. So at 14, she went back to her biological mother, whom she barely knew. Camp helped her reconcile with her adoptive family, and she expected things to be better after her graduation from the program.
But she said she would miss E-Nini-Hassee.
“I’ll miss, I guess, the family spirit. … Camp is like a place where you get that 24/7,” she said. “When people are mad at you, you know they still love you and stuff. Whereas at home, if my (biological) mom were mad at me, she would say the words ‘I hate you’ or ‘I don’t love you.’ That is what I will miss. Where you can get unconditional love no matter what.”
Eckerd offers its employees better benefits than most juvenile justice companies, providing its workers free housing or reduced rent on the grounds of most of its programs. But the outdoor programs still rely on a constant influx of new employees, most a few years out of college and considering careers in fields such as counseling or teaching.
Recruiting director Robyn Roett said Eckerd Youth Alternatives has become a training ground for the public schools, because the agency offers great experience with tough kids but can’t pay its teachers nearly as much as a school district.
The youth counselors live with the teens 24 hours a day. One teen at E-Nini-Hassee said she figures their annual salary of $23,600 works out to “like, 25 cents an hour.”
Several of the teens said they formed tight bonds with their favorite counselors. It has been hard to see them leave, they said.
WON’T THROW IN TOWEL
Jack Eckerd’s mother died when he was 10. His father couldn’t care for him as a single parent, and when Eckerd was in his early teens, he was sent to military school.
After establishing his drugstore chain in Florida, he made two unsuccessful runs for Florida governor as a Republican.
But Eckerd was a social liberal in some ways, his daughter said, and his programs are based on the idea that kids are still young and malleable enough to change. “If we give up on that, we might as well throw the towel in,” Hart said.
Eckerd became the first private contractor to take over management of a locked juvenile justice program from the state. In 1982, at the request of then-Gov. Bob Graham, Eckerd agreed to run the Okeechobee School for Boys. It still operates as the Eckerd Youth Development Center.
Eckerd Youth Alternatives also runs after-school programs, a transitional program for teens leaving foster care, reentry programs for young offenders returning home and a New Hampshire alternative school.
In the 1990s, the state reacted to high-profile juvenile crimes with a hard turn toward law and order. Teens once viewed as immature or rebellious came to be seen as dangerous threats to society.
The lock-’em-up mentality didn’t sit well with Eckerd, Hart said.
“I remember being at the meeting when the state decided boot camps were the new thing. … And I remember my father, I think it was on a phone call, he said: ‘You can tell them for me, we are not running boot camps, we are not supporting boot camps, and we will not be any part of boot camps in the state.’ ”
Last month, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Walter McNeil told legislators he would embrace one of Hart’s goals: scrapping the mission statement that says his agency exists to protect the public safety.
McNeil wants to go back to the purpose when it was founded in 1994, which balanced punishment with treatment.
But it is unlikely that the legislature will approve any budget increase for residential programs this year.
Since Jack and Ruth Eckerd died, the organization has relied on fund-raising events, individual donations and gifts from companies such as Publix Super Markets.
The donations help Eckerd pay for things that other programs cannot, including software, a virtual library and stipends for program graduates.
Teens who win the awards can buy glasses, uniforms or even lawn mowers for careers in landscaping. But they must update the organization on their progress.
Hart remembers her father expressing frustration with some of his friends who wouldn’t help his programs because they didn’t see how delinquents affected them.
To that, her father would say: “Well, of course they affect you. If they are not stealing from your retail establishment, you are going to pay for them to end up in one of our crowded prisons.”
Hart said she hopes the state will invest in juvenile justice as her family has.
“We want to work with the state,” Hart said, “and we are willing to put our money where our mouth is.”
Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
April 16, 2007 Monday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1639 words