YAP offers preventative help to families
By Sherri Blevins
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NJP spoke with Beverly Benson, the YAP Marshall/Jackson/DeKalb County Alabama Program Coordinator, on a topic she feels passionate about—helping families stay together. “Family is a precious gift, and there is a lot of trauma out there,” said Benson.
YAP stands for Youth Advocate Programs, a national nonprofit organization that will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary next year. Benson has devoted the last twenty years to helping families because of her passion for family unification. She and her husband were blessed to adopt five children, and through the adoption process, they realized resources were needed to help families in crises. She has been a YAP Advocate for the past six years.
YAP is the leading nonprofit provider of trauma-informed services that reduce the nation’s overreliance on youth incarceration, residential care, and group home foster placements. Benson stated, “We are a prevention program. We offer alternatives to out-of-home placement. We work with the courts to address things like truancy; we work with the Department of Human Resources to stabilize families; we work with parents and children to address the need for parenting skills, homemaking skills, and a lot of basic life skills.”
Benson explained that YAP Advocates and behavioral therapists can teach parents how to budget, prepare meals, and focus on scheduling to help them get their students to school and pick them up on time. The program focuses heavily on family engagement and teaching the importance of parents being present in their children’s lives. Benson stated, “Parents provide that critical support that enables their children to be successful adults.”
According to Benson, YAP serves as a resource to DHR and the court system. DHR and the court system may choose to require families to participate in a YAP program to address the family problem in an attempt to prevent families from being separated. In Alabama, YAP provides youth justice and child welfare services in 33 counties. In Marshall and Jackson Counties, youth justice services are provided through the Department of Youth Services diversion programs as an alternative to placement.
Benson said a YAP House recently opened in Jackson County to serve clients from Jackson, DeKalb, and Marshall Counties. She described the house as a safe meeting place for families without homes. The YAP House is a haven for youth and families to share a meal, do homework, connect, and unwind. For families who do have a home, YAP is an in-home program that meets families where they are. Meetings are held in the family home, making it more convenient for everyone to participate.
Benson was very excited to announce that YAP is now in the Jackson County and Scottsboro City School Systems. She said, “We are currently serving close to fifty families in the DHR system. We serve Marshall, Jackson, and DeKalb counties under our program.” She hopes to soon add DeKalb and Marshall County schools to the program when funding becomes available. Benson stated, “It is such a critical need. Frequently, we see kids having issues with truancy. There is a reason behind that. In many cases, the truancy problem is poverty-based. We go into a home and realize Mom and Dad are struggling to get the bills paid and make ends meet. We do believe strongly that poverty should never be a reason to remove children from the home. We can work on that to help them overcome that obstacle by linking them to resources.” She added that parenting skills are often taught to help those parents who may have had past problems with substance abuse and make parenting decisions out of guilt instead of what would be most beneficial to the child.
Benson emphasized that families in the program are treated with respect, and the program’s goal is to give families a chance to stay together and take an active role in the community.
For more information about YAP Inc., please visit yapinc.org.
