Nonprofit lands Little Rock youth-intervention pact

Little Rock has selected a 133-year-old nonprofit to help connect people who are deemed at risk of being swept up in the capital city’s increasing violence with services designed to improve their lives.

The Centers for Youth & Families, which traces its roots to an orphanage opened in 1884, will begin negotiating with city staff for a contract worth up to $150,000, after the Board of Directors voted 9-1 to approve working with the nonprofit.

The contract has been in development for months — Little Rock advertised it in May and stopped accepting proposals in June — but the effort generated more urgency after the July 1 shooting at the downtown nightclub Power Ultra Lounge that injured 28 people.

Community-based intervention programs such as this one are a piece of the city’s broader strategy to reduce violence, Mayor Mark Stodola said. Little Rock spends roughly $5.5 million on prevention, intervention and treatment programs that reach nearly 1,400 children annually, he said.

This specific program coincides with a new Little Rock effort to reach people within violent communities and steer them to free services, such as mental health care or career development, which Stodola calls Ceasefire Little Rock.

The Centers, based on West 12th Street, plans to send at least two staff members — or “street interveners” — directly into targeted communities. Their mission is to link 13- to 30-year-olds with programs it and other local agencies already offer, according to its response to the city’s request for qualifications.

“These Street Interveners will work in the community and spend the majority of their time where disconnected youth and young adults are ‘hanging out,’” the response says. “Many of the youth and young adults we engage will likely be struggling with serious personal and emotional challenges and have experienced failure, or been failed, by the systems designed to support them.”

City Director Ken Richardson, who opposed the contract, urged the city to move “correctly and deliberately” on intervention programs. He said he is concerned that potential partners in this contract and others aren’t prepared to build effective relationships with people in the targeted neighborhoods.

“I’m certainly not in disagreement with the need for these services,” Richardson said when the matter was placed on the agenda last week. “We need to have the right people doing it. We need to have the right capacity doing it. This is something we do not need to politicize at all.”

Before the vote, Richardson attempted to ask representatives of The Centers about how the nonprofit plans to train the interventionists, but City Attorney Tom Carpenter said he had to direct his questions to City Manager Bruce Moore, because Moore recommended approval after the city followed the normal bidding process.

The nonprofit’s representatives, after the vote, declined to speak with an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter. A phone message left with The Centers’ chief executive, Doug Stadter, was not returned.

Stodola and Moore said Little Rock would monitor The Centers throughout the contract, scheduled to run through Dec. 31, 2018, with a focus on whom the nonprofit sends into the community as its interventionists.

“I’ve got the same questions that Director Richardson does,” Stodola said. “It’s very critical that we get the right people.”

Richardson, whose Ward 2 encompasses a swath of south Little Rock, also criticized “misery merchants” who he said seek public funds at a time of crisis, and said the city must avoid enabling them. He said after the meeting that he did not intend to “disparage” the broader work at The Centers, which he praised.

“They’ve done some great work around youth services, but their ability to do this work” is unproven, he said.

The Centers employs 175 people and serves more than 5,000 children and their family members each year, offering therapy, emergency shelter, school-based mental health services, career development, prevention programs and other services, according to its proposal.

Dana Dossett, Little Rock’s director of community programs, said the nonprofit’s range of services and existing resources made it an appealing option.

“A great portion of these resources will be going directly towards the people who are actually on the street,” Dossett said “They don’t need to use the funds for rent or overhead.”

The nonprofit’s most recent public tax filing, from 2015, shows $17.8 million in revenue, $18.2 million in expenses and a $10.8 million fund balance — though most of its assets are tied up in land and facilities. About 73 percent of its spending was on program services.

The Centers, which does not charge people who use its services, received $5.3 million in grants and contributions that year and $11.9 million from Medicare and Medicaid payments, it reported.

Two other groups applied for the contract. One, Bridge 2 Success, is a faith-based group located on Baseline Road in the city’s southwest. The other, Dream Big Homie Project, would be a collaboration between Kareem Moody and Marcus Montgomery, educators and activists who have worked with at-risk youth for years.

The contract can be worth up to $150,000, or double what directors allotted for each of the 24 intervention and prevention programs the board authorized in January. The Centers has contracted 30 times with Little Rock since 1999, mostly for programs targeting at-risk youth, according to its proposal for the work.

“They get what we’re asking for,” Moore said. “This is one of the most important pieces that we can do right now especially with what is going on in our city and some of our targeted neighborhoods.”

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