From left, Rachel Medina of the JPO supervises Bianca Padilla, JPO program coordinator.

By Margaret Hopper

Grant County has a unique asset that allows it to tailor-make circumstances for its juvenile population. That's not an automatic blessing; it only works when those who understand it give it shape and make it work, according to Gary Stailey, who works at the Juvenile Probation Office with youths.

That same opportunity can be useless if the people in control treat it like a piece of fool-proof legislation that solves all problems by simply being. Using the wrong tools on a fine Ferrari engine could damage it in a very short time. And the same applies for the needs of a sensitive community.

This advantage is not well understood; it deserves some explanation. It may be the only existing Program Coordinator position left in the state of New Mexico at this time. According to Bianca Padilla, local Juvenile Probation Officer, her Program Coordinator/JPO slot carries the potential to build a structure based on local conditions, but it all depends on the planner's vision and ability to bring the community together for the mix; it is not a boxed cake formula, pre-guaranteed.

And it didn't just happen. Former JPO officer Gary Stailey knew what he was looking for and found it at Albuquerque: this job title that would allow freedom to build the right structure for a seriously ailing Grant County youth problem. The County had the problems, but not the conditions for solving them.

According to Padilla, Stailey saw the need for prevention. The existing system only targeted judgment after the fact, not prevention. This program development could address the conditions law enforcement could not touch, but it would take both vision and some time to put it together.

So, when Albuquerque, which had the slot, was willing to trade that for another JPO, Stailey worked until he had the deal made and legally transferred to Grant County. One less JPO position here, but great potential for a smart planner. That was a good start, but it still required the program developer.

Padilla said she thought efforts were made to create the plan, but it wasn't coming together quickly enough, and the position finally went unfilled for a year and a half. Meanwhile, she was graduating from college and needed a job where she could work with this kind of problem-solving. Through a series of unlikely events she found a chance to work in Grant County. Not quickly, but it happened.

Problem solved, right? Not quite. She said her first year was extremely difficult. She and Stailey could agree on what the visionary plan should be, but community had to see it, too, and be a part of it. It didn't. She said she couldn't even get local appointments to necessary agencies and organizations without help. And there could be no plan until this development took place. It was slow-going.

It took her a year to get even the minimums in place, but she worked on this while doing her other JPO work and learning how things had to happen here. In time she was able to get commitments with both Silver and Cobre school districts, absolutely essential if she was to make the Program Coordinator plan work.

Some of the parts that had to be addressed were the citation program, the truancy program, and the local Secure School. Suspensions were valid consequences, but while kids were out of school, they were unsupervised and got into even deeper problems. Kids had to be helped through the education system but not in the way it was presently shaped. She and partners developed new conditions, as Secure School had already given up the ghost.

But the kids were not totally to blame, and the problems couldn't be solved there. Family conditions needed changing, as many parents faulted the schools for not solving their problems. Why send the kids to school if parents had no faith in each day's results? The truancy reality was unmanageable.

So they backed up and started prosecuting families who resisted sending kids to school, after due process and the usual warnings, home visits, whatever. The local courts upheld the law. Move forward a step there. A second step was mandating that parents attend parenting classes set up by others in the juvenile system. The courts enforced that, too.

Did parents come willingly to learn that they needed to change how they handled their own kids? Get real. Each weekly session was a high pressure situation, even if it began with Gǣa family sit-down mealGǥ before the lessons. Sullen, grudging behaviors at the JPO office equaled anything the school classrooms had to offer.

But parents learned to comply, and according to Padilla, many, perhaps most, at the end of their retraining period, had learned some new skills. Some admitted they had not guessed that adding simple rules to their own family situations could make such positive differences in the lives of their children. Relationships were better, somehow.

Padilla's Program Coordination design was beginning to pay off. Every aspect of juvenile involvement had to be integrated into the plan. Everybody had a job, but now they were working together, and so were more parts of the community.

For JPO services, she pointed out that the Strengthening Families Program, the eight-week interactive social-skills classes, were helping kids and parents move past some of the hurts and into better relationships. Where counseling needs were critical, JPO was getting results in the six eight-week sessions. Restorative Justice also addressed the kids' needs to rebuild communication skills and relationships.

Community Youth Building (community service) has taken on a new look. At times in the past, it looked like an exercise in humiliation, with picking up other people's trash on curbs as the main occupation. She pointed out that some real skills are now being developed. The greenhouse project gave kids a chance to learn construction skills, irrigation experience, gardening and more.

The work sessions are more geared to learning a practical skill and giving each one a chance to get good at it, rather than confronting or coercing kids that they had Gǣa debt to society to pay," and that they certainly would. The new approach tastes so much better that some past clients will voluntarily show up at the next work party and lend a hand, she said. Also, these new skills will in time give them something to include on a resume. They can take pride in this.

So, how does she get the budget to make these changes possible? Some funding comes through the state legislature; she, herself, writes grants. Two of the more important are the $50,000 grants that go directly into Cobre and Silver, as she cannot administer the funds, herself.

Padilla will be the first to admit that she is just one person in the JPO program that has a larger number of people feeding into the Gǣco-op." All have critical jobs that the community and the kids need. There are no lone rangers. Her assignment as a JPO officer is directly with kids, too. But the additional assignment, Program Coordinator, is the one that pulls in the community agencies and organizations.

Not only does it work out the relationships, it is the base on which old needs can be turned into new directions. This job title can make a difference for the local mix and take new shapes, where the other departments are clearly cut and dried, regimented and defined by law. This is what Stailey's vision foresaw.

Padilla has the gift of seeing how to make this program serve the unmet needs of the other many JPO programsG