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LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) — The campus is quiet and well-kept. A flag flutters on a pole. The view is of two rivers and brown bluffs.
In classrooms in the wooden and brick buildings that are neatly arranged on 17 acres in Lewiston's Reno Addition, between downtown and the Lewiston Orchards, children and teenagers, segregated by age and gender, sit at desks or in casual semicircles interacting with instructors and each other.
The atmosphere is not much different from other classrooms in other schools, but the 65 students at the Northwest Children's Home are not run-of-the-mill. They are here for a reason. Many are waiting to be placed in foster care, or they have been removed from their homes temporarily because of neglect or abuse. They suffer from abandonment, trust and anger issues. The staff provides them the short- and long-term mental health counseling as well as the education they need to earn public school equivalency credits.
"A lot of the kids have been subjected to early childhood trauma," said Scott Mosher, director of clinic services at the children's home. "Their tolerance for frustration is really low."
Last month, one of the students, who is no longer at the facility, walked off campus, broke into a neighboring house and struck the property owner in the back of the head with a 6-pound rock.
The woman recovered. The student was charged by authorities and relocated to a juvenile justice facility.
The incident raised a red flag among neighbors and community members who wondered how a student at the home could walk off unsupervised, and more alarming, could it happen again?
The 14-year-old who was charged with aggravated battery, a felony, was supposed to be going to a classroom when he slipped out of a building using a door on which the alarm was broken, Mosher said. Children at the facility are supervised on a ratio of four children for each staff member, and they are prohibited from being off campus unsupervised. Their whereabouts on campus are diligently tracked.
Students are on a two-strike behavioral policy, Mosher said. They are given a second chance for misbehaving depending on the egregiousness of their missteps. Crimes, referred to police, get them expelled.
Mosher's title is misleading. Although he directs the services provided to the children and calls them clients, he is the home's foreman, the boot on the ground who makes rounds between buildings, talking to staff while on a first-name basis with the students, who range from 6 to 18 years old.
The average length of stay for students is a year, he said, although some may stay for three years. Employees, many of them college students or recent graduates working on resumes, often don't stay much longer. The attrition rate is problematic in a facility that attempts to give students a sense of stability, and the experience to deal with the complexities of its clientele.
"The more stable the staff, the better it is for the kids," he said.
Like a handful of other staff members, Mosher has been part of the children's home — a private, nonprofit treatment center with campuses in Lewiston and Nampa — for 25 years.
Rod Wilson, the facility's director, has worked 38 years at the children's home.
"People stay because they like to help kids," Wilson said. "That's why I came. We do have issues with people leaving. We would like that there wasn't so much turnover."
On any given day a campus tour shows visitors that — the majority of the time — it is a safe place for students and staff. Small children sing "the Fox Song" with teachers in an elementary class. In another building, teenagers learn basic math in a classroom not overtly different from any high school classroom in Idaho. In quiet settings on campus, including a kitchen table in a girl's dormitory, teenagers meet individually with staff psychologists.
There is another routine, however, that comes across often in the afternoons or evenings, on police scanners. And it is the reason that each student building on campus has a "safe room," where unruly children are placed and watched until they cool down, or, they no longer present a threat to other students, themselves or staff members.
This year, Lewiston police have responded to the facility 180 times and were asked to respond 260 times. Most of the time, officers respond to calls of assault or battery by students, property damage or threatening behavior. And despite the statistics, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, which licenses the facility, requires it to have an open campus and prevents staff from heavy-handed treatment of students.
When police physically respond to the children's home, "25 to 30 percent of the time we go for runaways off campus, we go there and send an officer to intercept them," Lewiston Deputy Police Chief Roger Lanier said.
Police intervene if staffers think the student runaway may harm themselves or others.
Although the department doesn't have an official policy regarding when to respond, Lanier said, shift sergeants are given the discretion to decide for themselves.
"We don't want our officers going to the children's home to perform functions that we feel should be performed by the children's home staff," he said.
If a crime is committed, police go.
"The problem is, oftentimes we don't know that until we get there," he said. "Most of the calls are for fights. That's the lion's share of them."
Last year two staff members suffered on-the-job concussions through altercations with students, Mosher said. In any given year, five staff members may be injured in scuffles.
Despite what may seem a locale heavily targeted by patrol cars, the Reno Addition is sought after by home buyers. The well-manicured, upper-middle class neighborhood is home to Jewett Park, named after a former Potlatch Corp. executive who once lived in what is now the Jewett House on the campus at Northwest Children's Home.
Ronda Laybourn, a Lewiston real estate agent who lives nearby, said having the children's home in the neighborhood is not an issue.
"Is the neighborhood safe? Unequivocally, yes," Laybourn said.
Having a neighbor struck with a rock by a children's home student — the incident in November happened three houses away — is an isolated event that could take place in any neighborhood in town, she said. Staff at the home will surely remedy any problems, she said. In the meantime, buyers still peruse the neighborhood with regularity.
"It's a popular area with strong home sales," she said. "People still want to come live here."
Laybourn's sentiment is reflected in neighbors whose property borders the Northwest Children's Home acreage. Most of them have not had run-ins with youth sneaking off the grounds. They call the children's home a good neighbor.
"There are no issues, there really aren't," said Cynda Hyndman, whose property is across a fence from the home. "We see more deer than kids. I see that as a safe haven for those kids."
Mosher, who will retire from his post next year, said he has never feared for his safety at the children's home, although, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration agency, social service workers rank near the top of the list of employees who are assaulted at work, next to cab drivers and night shift convenience store clerks.
Mosher's concern is less for himself than his clients.
"We try to make a difference in these kids' lives," he said. "We try to treat them special and to help them feel good about themselves."
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Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com
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