Lighthouse Youth Services in Cincinnati started a scattered-site apartment program in 1981 for youth leaving foster care and a transitional living program for older, homeless youth in 1988. As I look back, I know that these programs did not just pop up without a lot of doubt, challenges and system resistance. Today I’d like to share some of the changes that our system had to make in order for us to get about the business of assisting youth in transition.

At the state level, providers had to be given a chance to prove that new living arrangement models could work. Only after several years of trial and error on the part of several non-profit pioneers were the Ohio State Codes changed to allow for less-supervised setting liked scattered-sites to be considered a legitimate part of the child welfare system. The state brought in professionals at every level to develop the new codes and took the leap of faith necessary to make licensing reflect the needs of youth for more real-life experience and less protection. Even at the federal level, the first wave of TLP grants did not recognize scattered-sites as an option and most of the original TLP grantees had to develop supervised ‘cluster” sites for their programs. Eventually, the State had to let go of the idea of pre-approving every single apartment site and instead licensed agencies to provide IL services and self-monitor the youth. From my point of view, this has worked well, with local children’s services staff and non-profit care-providers working together to assess safety issues.

At the county level, both IL and children’s services caseworkers had to learn to allow youth to make mistakes and learn from hundreds of poor decisions. Just like any parent, staff had to learn how not to be helpful and let natural consequences provide feedback to youth on their own for the first time. For example, we had many arguments about whether a youth who blew his food allowance on new shoes should be given more money for food or allowed to go hungry for a few days. These discussions still take place but there is now much more system cohesiveness about these issues. The local children’s services system also had to reconfigure its budget and accounting processes to pay for placement options other than foster homes, group homes and residential treatment centers. It took years to work out the details. Juvenile court personnel had to let go of many controls and disciplinary procedures in order to sanction individual apartment placements-it didn’t make sense to put someone on house arrest who was two months from being discharged from the system and needed to be looking for a job.

At the agency level, our board of trustees had to assume new liability, new on-call systems, back up living arrangements for those who were out of control and means of moving youth around the area. IL staff had to convince private landlords to try renting to a youth not known to IL and had to work out lease agreements that worked for all. The agency had to work out agreements with its shelter program and group homes for youth who needed to be “stepped-back” and had to convince referring agencies that moving unsuccessful youth to a new site for a second chance could lead to better outcomes.

At the program level, staff had to develop a program without the benefit of much field literature, research or other provider’s experiences. Staff had to get used to continuous criticism from everybody about what they youth needed, (most youth have 1 or 2 parents, these youth have dozens of parental figures!) IL staff had to let go of having one set of rules for everyone and had to define success differently for each youth.

As everyone knows, these days, change is constant. But many of the significant system changes have now been made in our community and hopefully, we won’t have to spend as much time selling something that we see as common sense.