Agency helps youth leap into adulthood

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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star

A homeless teenager living at the City Mission called HUB for help.

Staff at the Lincoln agency helped her complete a job application and gave her advice on what to wear and say.

They drove her to Noodles & Company, where she introduced herself to the manager and delivered the application.

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HUB director Dwight Brown often works with youth in the agency's living room area to help them feel more at home. (Robert Becker)

HUB director Dwight Brown often works with youth in the agency's living room area to help them feel more at home. (Robert Becker)

She got an interview on the spot and got the job. Then, she raced back to share her joy, said Dwite Brown, HUB director.

HUB has been helping young adults navigate adult life for the past two years.

It’s an awkward age, 16 to 24. You aren’t a child any more. But you often don’t have the skills or the experience to negotiate the adult world alone.

Often, parents help during this transition, with money, encouragement, advice.

The HUB staff of four help youth who lack parental involvement transition into the adult world.

They help young men and women look for a job and teach them how to act on interviews.

They help youth look for a place to live.

They might round up some secondhand dishes and pans for a first apartment or get a new car battery so a young adult can get to work.

They line youth up with counseling, with food stamps, with college applications.

HUB staff are forever pushing education. There are ways to finish high school, they tell the kids. Have you considered getting your GED? You might want to consider going to college.

The agency grew out of a Lincoln homeless study several years ago. Lincoln has a group of young people, alienated from parents or in the justice system; kids who are homeless or near homeless; kids who need some extra help growing up.

Just look at the average age of people in the local jail — early 20’s, said Kit Boesch, Lancaster County Human Services administrator, who chaired the task force looking at the homeless teen population.

“These youth are in jail because they made stupid choices in who they were hanging with or how to get money.”

“Most kids today are very fortunate. Most kids have wonderful parents and wonderful grandparents. They have great models and mentors and coaches. And they do just fine,” said Boesch.

But some kids don’t have anyone.

“And if you don’t have role models and a support system that can help you navigate the world of education, the world of employment, the world of health care, then you are in a world of hurt,” she said.

That’s where HUB steps in.

The agency, which has a $230,000 budget this year from an assortment of private and government grants, began as part of the Lincoln Action Program. It now has its own building, 727 S. Ninth St., and is working towards becoming an independent agency with a non-profit status, Brown said.

The transitional service network has worked with more than 360 youth since it began in 2004, according to Brown.

“These kids are not misguided. They do know what they want to do. But they don’t know how to get there,” said Brown, who has been working with Lincoln youth for more than a decade.

“They often have trouble making decisions and trouble with relationships,” he said.

HUB is not an acronym. “We couldn’t think of a good acronym.” “Here U Belong” and “Help Underachievers Believe” didn’t cut it, he said.

But HUB does stand for something. It is the focal point of interest, a center of activity, said Brown.

It’s a place where young people can get respect and help.

In fact, the small house on Ninth Street looks like a home and not an office or institution.

There’s a phone and a computer to use for job searches.

There’s a couch and pillows for lounging around.

There’s a long table for group meetings.

And the program is very individualized. The youth set their own goals, and HUB staff help them find ways to accomplish them.

So Marie Clark, the 20-year-old mother of an infant son, pregnant with twins and homeless, found a place to live with advice from HUB last year.

Lisa Buck got help getting the starter fixed on her 1993 Dodge Spirit. And Brown drove Buck’s daughter to kindergarten for a month last year while Buck was unemployed with a broken-down car.

HUB also helped get odds and ends — toothpaste, clothes, a winter jacket —for her daughter.

Today, Buck is working. She recently bought a new car, a black 2005 Chevy Impala. And she’s grateful for the help and support from the HUB staff.

HUB’s target population includes low-income youth who have dropped out of school or are in danger of dropping out; youth who are unemployed; who are homeless; youth coming out of a detention or rehabilitation facility; and youth who have aged out of foster care and no longer have any support system.

“We somehow make the assumption that when someone turns 21, they magically become and adult and all the problems go away,” said Boesch.

“Anyone who has had a 21-year-old knows how bogus that is,” she said.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.