TRANSITIONAL LIVING October to December 2014 Tennessee Report Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2015
KEY INDICATORS
181
207
1,035 William, left, searches online for apartments and homes with Andrew, his TL specialist.
WILLIAM’S MORE COMMITTED THE SECOND TIME AROUND William made a phone call to his mentor. It was the second difficult
227
Youth Villages helps more than 600 youth in the TL program every day.
Number of youth helped by TL program so far this fiscal year
Numbers below reflect second-quarter status of youth currently in the transitional living program.
79 %
IN SCHOOL OR GRADUATED
71 %
EMPLOYED OR SEEKING EMPLOYMENT
93
%
LIVING WITH FAMILY OR INDEPENDENTLY
87
%
NO INVOLVEMENT WITH THE LAW
phone call he’d had to make recently. William told Don, his mentor, everything that happened since they’d last spoken. William left a group home and state custody at 18 without any adult skills and entered Youth Villages’ transitional living program. His mentor, Don, helped him set up an apartment and co-signed for William’s utilities. “I don’t know how many loads of food he put in my refrigerator,” William said. “He got me a phone and other things I needed for the apartment.” But William didn’t take the TL program seriously. He missed meetings and didn’t do what was expected of him. While he found an apartment and began going to school, he also began to enjoy his freedom to excess. In a very short time, William was evicted, lost his job and dropped out of school. He didn’t have many options when he called Youth Villages. Andrew Smith is William’s TL specialist. “I didn’t want to wind up being like my parents,” William said. “I knew I had to make that call, and I was welcomed back to the TL program.” A month into TL, William was hired by an employment agency. That’s when he called Don, the person who’d staked William and believed in him when he was starting out on his own. “It took me a while to call him back,” William said. “After I told him Continued on next page
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