Bashor's new Day Program creates opportunities for struggling youth

Jan. 30—GOSHEN — Bashor Children's Home and Alternative School is expanding its offerings as it seeks to fill another need in the community while also celebrating its 100th anniversary.

The Day Reporting program, which runs under a service standard developed by the Department of Child Services, allows students to attend an alternative education at Bashor for up to six months while remaining with their families.

"Bashor's vision statement, in a nutshell, is that we believe in kids being raised by healthy families," said Vice President of Program Operations Mike Deranek. "The reason that we are so excited about this is because it is closer to 'how do we serve that vision of kids being raised by families in the community?' ... Our goal here is to try to help make sure that kids stay in the community, that they stay out of detention centers, and out of residential programs, and that if at all possible they can get the services they need while still maintaining that connection with their community."

Deranek said suspensions and expulsions where a child is no longer allowed to attend their school make it more likely that the child will find some other way to get in trouble, especially when unsupervised.

"It's the old 'idle hands' thing," he said. "We recognize and are told from stakeholders that one of the challenges facing kids in our community is kids who, their behavior gets them suspended or expelled from school and then they don't have anything to do for the day. That obviously adds stress to parents. 'If my kid is not able to go to school I have to go to work, but what do I do there?' ... especially for the older teens even I feel like a could leave them at home, but what are they going to be doing? What we see is with that group, there is an increased risk if they are not in school services of getting into trouble."

Deranek said the new program also helps with the county's commitment to ensuring that kids that don't need juvenile detention or residential treatment don't have to be at those institutions.

"We want to get those kids into a program so they can continue to receive educational supports," he explained.

The program provides at minimum four hours of educational support but would look different for any child enrolled through Apex or other online programs by the district. Students also receive two hours per day of additional resources such as group support for emotional regulation or problem-solving, recreation groups, or service learning like volunteering in the community.

"What we're shooting for in all of this is hoping that we're able to fill the gap a little bit," he said.

Deranek said Bashor knows there aren't a ton of kids in the community who fit the criteria, but if there's a need that they can fill, they want to do what they can.

The first child to enter the program came in November 2021 without a contract from DCS. The contract came about a year ago. Right now, the program has around five students, and he suspects around eight will be revolving through at any time.

The program goes up to six months but it can be reused by the student in the future if needed.

"Our goal with any of our programs really is to not have the kid enrolled in the program a day longer than they need to be," he said. "To do that successfully, we have be able to work with their school to figure out what requirements they need to re-enroll, what the school would like them to be working on, and so as we develop this program, our intent is to make sure that we have services that line up with what the schools want to see so that we can better help children and families to re-engage with the public school system and hopefully succeed and stay in public school because that's the goal."

The program can serve children from any district in Elkhart County, but currently, referrals are coming from the juvenile court.

"In many of these cases, the youth are already expelled from their school and so our challenge then is how do we help them to re-engage their school and meet those needs to get them back into school?" Deranek said.

Deranek hopes that in the future, schools can see the program as an alternative to expulsion.

"The ideal here would be that we reduce the number of youth who are expelled in county because we're able to divert them, stabilize them, and help them get back in with those school supports never stopping," he said. "Schools would agree- expelling a kid, that's the last option. Sometimes we have to do it for safety or it's necessary to maintain the education environment, but if we could avoid that and not have a break in services, we know in the long run that leads to better success for the kids and ultimately that leads to better success for them as they enter adulthood and as they enter the workforce.

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.