Throughout the state Texas has lower rates of juvenile detention than the national average. Children over the age of 16 are considered adults.[/caption]

The Fort Bend County Juvenile Probation Department expanded its mentor program this summer to help youths in the system turn their lives around. Previously, mentor volunteers were only able to visit with the youth in the detention center. A new program launched in 2015 pairs a mentor with a child on probation for weekly activities outside the center. 

“It just gives [youths] somebody, not necessarily to be accountable to, but somebody that’s sitting and talking to them about what they want to do with their lives or how they want to get out of this little rut that they’ve found themselves in,” said Susan Bearden, special programs director for the Fort Bend Juvenile Probation Department.

Fort Bend County does not monitor statistics on how the expanded mentoring program affects its recidivism rates. The numbers nationwide, though, suggest that 70-80 percent of children with mentors do not have problems getting into trouble again, Bearden said.

The National Institute of Justice gave mentoring an “effective evidence rating” for reducing multiple crimes or offenses among youth ages 6-18. The rating was based on a survey of more than 5,000 mentoring programs that served approximately 3 million youth nationwide between 1995 and 2011.

To become a mentor with the Fort Bend Juvenile Probation Department, a volunteer must be at least age 21 and pass a background check.

“If that comes back positive and ready to go, then we ask that mentor to give at least an hour a week, matched with one [child] that is currently on probation,” Bearden said.

The department models its mentoring program on Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, in which a mentor picks up the child from his or her home and does something active with him or her one on one, she said.

“Whether that be bowling or movies or whatever you would do with your own child, just exposing them to things [like] that. Obviously, they haven’t had a positive adult role model in their life,” Bearden said. “So we’re trying to provide that person for them from the community.”

Community members have been mentoring youths in the detention center in Richmond for more than a decade, Bearden said. There is still a need for volunteering in the detention center, she said, because those visits might be the child’s only visits.

However, the probation department would prefer to grow the expanded mentoring program, she said. Bearden is trying to get the word out to any potential volunteers throughout the Fort Bend County area.

“You really do touch the kids more when you get to actually [do activities] with them,” Bearden said. “Going to see them in the detention center is more like a crisis situation. They don’t even know what’s going to go on with them. It’s like jail visitation.”

Each mentorship is coordinated individually, and volunteers are needed year-round, Bearden said.

To volunteer as a mentor call 281-633-7317 or visit https://fbpfy.org.