New leader for agency that helps at-risk youth
The Honolulu group has helped reform nearly 30 gangs
A 20-year-old organization that has steered thousands of youths from destructive behavior and reformed nearly 30 gangs on Oahu is taking a new turn.
Sidney Rosen, the founder and president of Adult Friends for Youth, announced that he will retire on July 1, handing over control to Deborah Spencer, the agency's senior master practitioner. Chief Operating Officer Terry Fisher will also retire July 1.
"Just seems to be a good time to let the younger folks with more agile brains than I have take over," said Rosen, 69, who plans to write a second book about helping at-risk youth in Hawaii.
"Debbie Spencer has been with us for 18 years now. She's done a lot of our cutting-edge gang work," he said. Spencer joined the agency while still a University of Hawaii master's student in social work.
"The confidence he had in me then, he's having in me again to take over this agency," she said.
The leadership change comes after the organization has refined its method of working with at-risk youths for two decades, winning praise from state and local officials.
"They've made some really valuable contributions in helping address ... the issue of gangs and gang intervention," said Sharon Agnew, executive director of the state's Office of Youth Services. "I think that they have carved out a niche in Hawaii of doing things Hawaii-style ... in a manner that is less threatening."
Catherine Payne, principle of Farrington High School, knows Adult Friends for Youth has helped many of the students at her school.
Payne, a board member of Adult Friends for Youth, said the agency works with youths in an uncommon way.
"It's an original approach to working with gangs, as opposed to just trying to get kids to stay out of gangs," she said. "I think that's a real distinction. They've been very successful in redirecting kids while not forcing them to get rid of their friendship affiliations."
Recently, the Hawaii Psychological Association gave the agency the Pookela award, created to recognize the agency and its work despite its small size.
"They're such a small organization and the kind of work that they do is just unbelievable," said Lynn Goya, a psychologist with the Hawaii Psychological Association.
"They're a very close-knit organization, and part of the reason I think is because they have a lot of respect for each other," Goya said.
The agency, which has 11 employees including former gang members, began as a federal grant program 20 years ago and now has 11 youth programs.
They include C-Base, an alternative education program giving at-risk youth a second chance, and the Student Transition Convention, which works with about 130 schools statewide to help students transition from elementary to middle school.
Rosen imagines his next book will cover the last 20 years of his agency's work with gangs to show with anecdotes that the methods in his first book work.
In 1996, Rosen co-authored a book describing the agency's methods for working with gangs. The book, "Toward a Gang Solution: The Redirectional Method," explained that the agency interacts with entire gangs, leading to positive impacts on individual members, Rosen said.
"We do have what is really the cutting-edge therapeutic methodology for rehabilitating youth gang members," Rosen said. "There is no other therapeutic methodology for working with whole gangs. There are approaches ... others have used for working with high-risk kids, but there's no group therapeutic methodology for working with gangs as whole entities. This is something that Adult Friends for Youth developed and published in '96."