Because Someone Cares

 

 

Providing hope for an alternate path for our families and our youth

 

 

“I’m here today because someone cared.  Someone believed I had value, that I was worth saving.”  Danica Rubenstein, director of The Front Porch, moved here from West Virginia for two reasons.  She has always been drawn to Savannah, and she has always been drawn to giving back what was once given to her. “I’m here today because that care wasn’t wasted.”

As it is for the others on her team, her work at The Front Porch is a service, a calling, and a vocation as much as it is a career choice. They are not the first to see the needs and feel that call, however.  This team is standing on the shoulders of giants as active stewards of a dream brought to life by others before them. 

The Chatham Community Blueprint prioritizes and supports initiatives that improve the community in the key areas of economy, education, health, and quality of life.  In keeping with that, in 2018 the County Commission empowered Chatham County’s Juvenile Court to establish The Front Porch as a Community Based Risk Reduction Program.  The court worked with the Annie Casey Foundation and studied innovative programs across the country.  It built The Front Porch to serve children within their jurisdiction who are in need of special services or who are at risk due to delinquency or dependency.  

This initiative brought to bear all the resources of our community as an all-hands-on-deck multi-agency resource center, supporting rehabilitation and restoration for children and families.  “So many family concerns could be addressed that would help prevent a child from coming to Juvenile Court." Juvenile Court Judge Roxanne Formey clearly sees the need in the community as well as the benefits of the initiative. “If you are experiencing challenges to meeting basic needs and do not have a clear pathway to obtaining them, this impacts the entire family, especially our children. Our children are facing incredible obstacles to success, including unaddressed physical, emotional, and social concerns. This can result in behaviors that lead to justice system involvement. We want to prevent that to the best of our ability. The Front Porch works to get underneath the problems and provide a pathway to addressing them.”

If the staff of The Front Porch have a collective super-power, it’s that they have a wide-angle perspective that allows them to see much more of the big picture than most people or even most other agencies do.  The Front Porch provides a number of resources internally, but more than that, it knows what other resources are out there, and it knows how to access those resources.   Theresa Owens, Juvenile Court Administrator, acknowledges with gratitude that our community is in fact resource-rich, with many, many organizations working toward the common goal of a healthy community.  By asking the right questions, making assessments about which resources might be the right fit for a particular need, connecting youth and families to those services with a warm hand-off, and then following them through the entire process, The Front Porch takes all the pieces and stitches them together seamlessly. The Front Porch, in essence, is an early-intervention program that is incredibly effective at resolving issues that in the past would have led to involvement with the juvenile justice system.

 

 

How do they do it?  It’s like cooking – both an art and a science.  On the one hand there are recipes and ingredient lists: the Blueprint stipulates measurable goals and mandates certain training and levels of expertise.  Advising or governing bodies like the Interagency Oversight Group and the National Assessment Center Organization bring community stakeholders and key representatives from affiliated organizations to the table to guide what The Front Porch does.  The staff members have deep experience, too, bringing skills from legal, criminal justice, social services, education, mental health, and community engagement careers.  They are dedicated professionals who can really cook.

But there’s an art to it, too.  An intuitive feel for what could work, what might be needed, what would be good to try.  Here’s where they get creative and where The Front Porch stops looking like just another government agency.  For one thing, you should see the walls.  Danica says, “They probably thought I was crazy when I showed up with buckets of paint.  I just thought, we’re going to be working with families, so I wanted it to be warm and welcoming.  You know it’s hard for them to step through our door the first time.  You don’t know what they had to go through to get from their door to ours.  I wanted them to feel safe.  I wanted them to say with dignity and integrity, we’re here.”

A SCAD student covered walls with vibrant murals of marine life. Framed posters cover other walls, like windows into the many parts of this energetic place.  There are therapeutic art classes and after school tutoring sessions. The Front Porch has an active social media and a podcast on Youtube.  They have a Step Team!  Things like comic book competitions and logo design competitions make kids feel engaged and that they belong.

The Youth Mentoring Hub connects kids with support in a variety of areas, and The Front Porch Perspectives connects them with each other – boys the second Wednesday of each month and girls the second Thursday. Team members say, “We give them a safe space to talk and let them lead the conversations.  We bring in mentors to facilitate.  Oh, and feed them! The Blueprint has been wonderful about feeding our kids! It’s important, especially with food scarcity.”

And we should talk about Shadow.  The little black feral cat that once lived on the streets and scavenged for food has found love and support and a place to belong at The Front Porch.  Now she is the star of two books written and charmingly illustrated by members of The Front Porch team.  The books not only tell Shadow’s story, they are an inspired way to illustrate the story of the changes The Front Porch brings about in other lives, too. 

The Front Porch impacts lives at the most basic levels.  Team members say, “we serve families.  What do families need?” Diapers and formula for new moms.  School uniforms and supplies for kids.  Food and toiletries for any who need them.  Clothing for men, women, and children.  “If there is a need and we have something, we will find a way to get it out to someone that needs it.  We are not going to waste anything that is given to us!” Businesses donate.  People volunteer.  Churches help pay critical bills or supply specific needs.  There are so many ways that anyone can help make a difference.

 

Danica and her team always come back to The Big Why – why they all love this hard road that they walk with the people they serve: 

“Any child or family needs a little help sometimes, just a little hope.  That’s the key word for everything – hope.”

“It’s hard to come in and see the need, but this is an amazing team!  The humanity and the compassion here!  We come together at the hardest, and we remember why we’re here, and we think outside the box.”

“If we can reach just one person, just one . . . We may not have all the answers, but as long as we keep doing the next right, best thing and we can lay our heads down at night and know that we helped somebody, that’s what we live for.”

 

“I love that we can say, what we did, it matters.”

 

The Front Porch is deeply grateful for the support of its collaborating partners:

• Chatham County Board of Commissioners
• Chatham County District Attorney’s Office
• Chatham County Juvenile Court
• Chatham County Public Defenders Office
• City of Savannah
• Coastal Georgia Indicators Coalition
• Deep Center
• Division of Family and Children Services
• Forsyth Farmers Market
• Gateway Community Service Board
• Grow Initiative GA
• I is We Youth Mentoring
• Mediation Center of the Coastal Empire
• Parent University
• Park Place Outreach
• Savannah Chatham County Public School System
• Shelter From The Rain
• Joseph’s/Candler
• Tharros Place, Inc.
• TIP (Talented Individuals with Power)
• And Community Representatives