Group home for boys opening in city

Published 1:06 pm Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A new group home in Vicksburg for at-risk and troubled teen boys is about to become a reality.

The three-bedroom Sherman Avenue house in the Riviera Heights neighborhood off North Washington Street is being opened to provide a “stable, family-like” home for six boys ages 13 to 19 by the Waters Youth Foundation.

Chief Executive Officer Larry Waters, a Vicksburg native who lived in Southern California for many years before returning in 2004, opened a similar home in Los Angeles in 1989, he said.

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“It was a very effective program,” said Waters. “The boys who lived there are doing well — they have jobs, they’ve joined the service or gone to college. It’s given them an opportunity to grow up in something like a family atmosphere and become productive citizens.”

Monday, Waters and his staff, including Executive Director Maresa Rone Hart, clinical consultant Michelle Johnson and home director Pat Anderson, held an open house and invited city and county officials, Youth Court and children’s service providers and school officials to see the home.

“These children might be abused, maybe neglected — we won’t know until they’ve been appointed to us,” said Hart. “But now our children will get to stay in Warren County.”

A group home for adolescent boys was operated for several years by Warren Yazoo Mental Health Center in the 1990s, but closed for lack of funding, said Jeanine Hanks, who coordinates adolescent services on the Wisconsin Avenue campus.

“It’s definitely a needed service in Warren County,” Hanks said. “There is a shortage of group-home facilities in the state, especially for kids who have some emotional problems, and group homes are ideal for them.”

Currently, some of those Warren County boys get placed in foster homes, but for group home-placement they must go to Rankin County, Jackson or other areas in the state, Hart said.

Bedrooms in the Sherman Avenue home have been freshly painted, outfitted with dressers, nightstands and twin beds topped with colorful quilted comforters and plenty of pillows. The family room is set up with a television, DVD player, gas-burning fireplace, couches and pillows, books, board games and other items for the boys’ free time.

“We want them to feel like it’s a real home,” Hart said. “We want them to know they are safe here, and they can talk to us when they need to.”

Waters and his staff have received the OK of the Mississippi Department of Human Services and await licensing by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health before accepting boys into their care.

At least two staff members will be in the home at all times, Hart said. Meals will be prepared by the staff, but each boy will be required to do daily chores including keeping his bedroom neat, folding and putting away his own laundry and helping with yardwork.

The boys will have access to group and individual counseling, anger management skills, help and supervision with homework, tutoring as needed and mentoring. In addition, they will be taken to the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library three times a week and on other excursions as well.

“Whatever it is that they need, we’ll provide it,” Hart said, adding that the placements will be long term, even years if necessary.

Community help also is welcomed, Johnson said. “We’re accepting any donations in any amount to help create the atmosphere that we want for these young men. We want to set up a basketball court, we need outside seating — we’re looking for somebody to adopt our backyard,” she said.

Waters said he has been working with DHS for about a year to get the home licensed and operational. He hopes to open a home for adolescent girls, perhaps outside the city limits in Warren County.