Growing up as a kid in the downtown area of any city can be rough, and as the city with the 15th highest homeless youth rate in the nation, Raleigh is no exception. Haven House Services, a non-profit agency in Raleigh, is working to change such statistics.
What began in 1972 as an idea to start a group home for girls would eventually develop into an organization devoted to helping at-risk youths in downtown Raleigh and throughout Wake County. Rev. Al Dimmock, a pastor and founder of Haven House Services, witnessed a case while volunteering in juvenile court of a young girl who could not go home, could not go to school and did not have the resources to provide for herself.
The case motivated Dimmock to create a place where youths in difficult circumstances like those of this young girl could get help.
“It was started because there is a need in the community,” said Haven House Services Director of Human Resources Julianne Kirby. “And we’ve been around for over 40 years, so I think that shows that there is [a need].”
According to Kirby, Haven House Services works through 12 programs and operates from three different locations, each of which offers different services for struggling youths in the downtown Raleigh area. The main office on West Cabarrus Street operates through community-based programs, and also provides transportation for kids to come there after school and to take them home afterward.
The Outreach Center, located on Wake Forest Road, is for young adults ages 17-23 who either cannot provide for themselves independently or are homeless. The center serves as means to provide a shower, food, bus passes and various other services for young adults who need them, according to Kirby.
“It’s not a shelter, but it is a drop-in center,” Kirby said. “Monday, Wednesday and Friday young adults can come into the center and get their basic needs met.”
The third location is a 24-hour homeless shelter and short-term crisis center on West Morgan Street for kids ages 10-17 who are facing urgent situations, according to Kirby.
“We deal with different types of crisis situations,” Kirby said. “We have the kids who are involved in gangs and we try to minimize their time in the gangs. Then we have kids who are court ordered to do community service and restitution, so we work with the kids to get those hours and fees met.”
Along with its crisis and homeless services, the organization has two other main programs in place to assist struggling youths in the community: the diversion and intervention programs.
“Diversion programs will focus on kids who are not yet court-involved and are just starting to show trouble,” Kirby said. “And then we have intervention programs, which are mainly kids who have picked up charges of some sort.”
According to Kirby, the programs at Haven House Services not only work to resolve short-term setbacks youths in the community are facing, but they are also designed to assist in youth development.
“We’re not going to be one more punitive factor in these kids’ lives,” Kirby said. “We try to work with them and empower them as much as we can with whatever situation they’re facing. Even the ones who are supposed to be doing community service because they did something illegal, we will try to work them to get them to make better decisions and have more positive outcomes in the future.”
In addition to being involved with other nonprofit agencies in the Raleigh area, Haven House Services has had a significant amount of support from NC State students throughout the years.
“We have a significant amount of NC State interns who come here and work at multiple levels in different programs,” Kirby said. “We’ve had good experience with NC State students.”
Leelynn Pinion, a graduate student studying social work at NC State, has worked with HHS since August and said that working there has helped her become more familiar with the struggles many teenagers in the downtown Raleigh area are facing.
“It has gotten me a lot more acquainted with issues associated with this population,” Pinion said. “It’s made me more interested in how schools interact with youths this age in ways that can prevent them being involved in the court system.”
Despite having worked with smaller children in other organizations, Pinion said it was a different experience working with adolescents, especially ones with a history of illegal activity.
“It’s just a different approach when you’re working with kids after they’ve been involved in the court system as opposed to before,” Pinion said. “They come in with a different attitude.”
Though working with teenagers at HHS has been a new experience for Pinion, she said it has been a rewarding one.
She was required for a class to interview a youth she had been working with as a therapist would interview a client for the first time.
“It was so awesome to see his progress after that day, knowing so much about where he was coming from and how much more positive he seemed at the end of his time,” Pinion said. “He just kept saying he’s not going to get in trouble again, he’s going to focus on school and it wasn’t like he was just saying it. He was really serious about what he was saying.”
