Together empowering our Youth: SCCPSS and The Front Porch supporting students and families

Danica Rubenstein: All of the youth that we see through here are five through 17. Non-court involved, not-DFCS (Division of Family & Children Services) involved.

Dr. Quentina Miller-Fields: And they serve as a liaison between our students families and the available community resources.

Ken Slats: It's a free one stop shop for students and their families.

Shawnessey Cargile: So there's different ways that we do that. There's different programs we might offer in-house. There's different little things to engage parents to engage families, to engage kids, which are all beneficial. But the main thing is get them connected to resources mentally, physically, socially, academically.

Dr. Quentina Miller-Fields: So between the school guidance counselor and the school social worker, if a student is a need, all they have to do is reach out to one of those persons and they can make the referral to The Front Porch.

Danica Rubenstein:Our job is basically to do an assessment with the family and the youth to find out where the barriers are, or where the lack of services are or the gaps in the needs. And then we do that assessment and we figure out, okay, well, there's these agencies in Chatham County that we could refer them to to get them the supports that they need.

Ken Slats: supports that could make a difference in a student success.

Dr. Quentina Miller-Fields: It's not just about the student because they're going home to a multitude of issues and problems. Then they bring those problems and those situations to the school. So we want to frontload success so they won't have to backload failure.

Shawnessey Cargile: If the connection is made, and there's at least enough there towards a positive or help experience. So down the road we'll be more open to like, oh yeah, I did tutoring before. I'll try that again. Or, you know, I tried counseling when I was nine. Now I'm 15. I could try it again. Hopefully we can at least make positive connections now. They last for years. Or they at least get the ball rolling.

Danica Rubenstein: When your child isn't going to school. When they've socially or academically disengaged. A lot of that happens, you know, when they're transitioning from elementary into middle school, by the time they get from middle school to high. You know,  it's a really big challenge. So we try to catch them early.

Ken Slats: One of the true successes of the eight-year-old Front Porch is the development of the Youth Mentoring Hub. Now a one-stop-shop website for youth mentoring.

Shawnessey Cargile: Volunteers can go. Parents can go to that website. SavYouth mentoring.org to find out about groups they may not know about. And it's all in one place. And then through that relationship that we have with the school system, they started hosting some of their expo type events with a mentoring focus because that was important to the school system, and they knew that we were already creating this collaborative, this hub.

Danica Rubenstein: The schools are so vested and, in their youth and their families and that they want to work alongside and not this is mine, this is mine. But what can we do as a village to help this family?

Dr. Quentina Miller-Fields: We realize that we do some of our best work or we collaborate with those in our community.

Ken Slats: The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System and its partners, like The Front Porch, working to help students succeed in and out of the classroom. For SCCPSS, I'm Ken Slats.