CEO Gloria Reyes and Staff Celebrate Briarpatch’s 50th Anniversary: Adolescence Way Station
Gloria Reyes became the CEO of Briarpatch Youth Services in 2020.
Part 2 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling
Back in 1971, the ant-war movement was still going strong with regular marches down State Street. The counter culture was in full bloom with the campus area serving as its center. With a lot of social flux in the community, homeless and runaway youth, primarily Euro-American, congregated on State Street. And so Briarpatch was formed to give the youth safety — with some being temporarily sheltered in foster homes — and give them some direction in their lives. In some ways, Briarpatch was a way station on the turbulent journey through adolescence.
Over the past 50 years, Briarpatch Youth Services has gone through a type of evolution to adapt to changing needs and demographics, but it still remains true to its mission in giving the youth the support they need with empathy.
“As our clientele and the people whom we serve changed, the agency has changed, particularly around how to serve and focus on racial equity, cultural competency within our organization,” said Gloria Reyes, Briarpatch’s CEO. “And we adjust the way that we train people who work with our youth. It’s now about understanding race and culture and how racism exists within our system. It’s really something that we value, that we need people who really understand those concepts and also people who have lived experience because we have learned that people with lived experience are able to connect
better to those who are struggling. That is very important as well. And so there was a time when organizations and the people they served were predominantly white, Caucasian. But that is no longer the case because our demographics have changed. We needed people who looked like the people whom we served. That is very important to us at Briarpatch, It is stuff that I have been working on since I got to Briarpatch. It’s really changing our practices, our policies and environment around racial equity and centering ourselves when we make big budget decisions, when we make big hiring decisions that we center ourselves around race and equity.”
It still maintains a runaway and youth hotline that gives support and guidance to youth in crisis.
“We have a shelter/runaway youth program,” Reyes said. “That really serves kids who can’t find a place to stay and need to have a safe place to go while we figure out housing situations for our young people. And then our runaway homeless youth is really working with the child to connect them to connect them with services within Briarpatch and outside of Briarpatch. We have the parent support program, so we help support parents who are struggling with their teenage child in many different situations. We come across every situation in regards to the needs of parents, to help support parents who are going through some challenges with their young person.
And then we have restorative justice. We work in our schools and in our community and surrounding Dane County implementing restorative practices within the schools. We have a close relationship and collaboration with the YWCA and the youth court in providing restorative justice in our schools.”
When Briarpatch merged with the Community Adolescence Program in 2003, it also began providing intensive supervision to youth involved with the juvenile justice system.
“On the other side of our organization, we have our juvenile justice side where we serve kids who are in the juvenile justice system through intensive supervision and restitution,” Reyes said. “We also have a street outreach program. Our team is very small. This is a team of dedicated employees who are out and about on a daily basis in our neighborhoods, our schools and our parks and at intersections engaging young people who are homeless and have nowhere to go and navigating with them the complex system of getting housing, employment and providing them support while they are out there in the field. The street outreach program serves young people ages 17-24. We have an employment program. We have wonderful employees who are connecting with young people whether they are staying in our shelter, coming on from our other program and getting them employed. We match employers with potential employees who are 17-24-years-old or under the age of 17. We get them experience. We really focus on connecting them to employment areas that they are interested in pursuing a career in or learning more about. And with some, we help them just starting to make a living on their own and get a job and start earning money.”
And while Briarpatch does provided limited guidance counseling for the youth, it relies on its partners to really get at the emotional, traumatic and personal issues that some of the youth may be experiencing.
“We do have some partnerships with Journey Mental Health and other organizations to help support the work,” Reyes said. “Often times, we are finding that is just not enough. We really want to figure out how to do more. We just had a conversation with Journey Mental Health to get office hours at Briarpatch, having a mental health professional at Briarpatch on a regular basis to meet with our kids. That is a partnership that I would love to see where we aren’t having to send someone over to Journey Mental Health because Journey Mental Health is actually in our building. That is something that we are working on.”
Briarpatch is needed now more than ever.
“We serve about 3,000 youth each year,” Reyes said. “They are good kids. The kids who come through here are so resilient. They are experiencing significant challenges. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of stories and situations our children are living in right now. They have been abused. They have been left behind. They have been forgotten. They have been just thrown away. It’s so hard to see them in their struggle. And it is no wonder that we see these kids later on given no support in the justice system as adults and committing crimes, who are living over in a park somewhere. Our kids become adults. It’s just the heartfelt stories and the trauma that our kids are faced with today is unbelievable.”
Children still need that adolescent way station that Briarpatch provides to get their bearings and positively move on with their lives.
