Funding Slashed For Local Youth Delinquency Program

BROOKSVILLE - A local nonprofit organization designed to help troubled teens break the cycle of drugs, fighting and dropping out of school is feeling the pain of state budget cuts.

Officials at Hernando County-based Youth Recovery Services - the organization founded a year ago by former school principal and Spring Hill resident Michael Ransaw - recently received word that their state delinquency prevention grant has been renewed through 2010.

However, the funding has been reduced by 33 percent, or about $20,000 each year.

"Initially, we were happy that we'd survived budget cuts, and were told we would be getting a 3 percent cut. Then we got a call back the following week telling us it was 33 percent," Ransaw said.

It has been reduced from nearly $63,000 to nearly $43,000.

Unlike the dozens of other organizations in the county that work within schools to prevent or discipline youth, the organization is designed to help them outside of school hours.

Its services, which include an after-school prevention education program, are free to youth or families that meet various risk factors, such as suspension, truancy, school failure, drugs or a family history of incarceration.

"Most of these kids wouldn't be able to afford to do (anything else) after school, if we weren't there," Ransaw said.

The program's components include school and court advocacy, prevention and intervention, leadership development and after-school programs with mentoring and tutoring.

The organization is community-based, with family participation required and all of its activities taking place at a facility off Kennedy Boulevard in Brooksville.

Officials are now scrambling to appeal to local funding sources - such as private donors - and trying to make up for losses by padding the program with volunteers and partnering with as many local organizations as possible.

"We are more adamant than ever that we'll continue to provide a quality program," Ransaw said. "Well just have to go back and use volunteers more, particularly volunteer mentors."

In its first year, the organization has already been built primarily on contributions from people such as prominent Spring Hill insurance agent and school board candidate James Yant, who co-founded the organization.

The organization is governed by a board of directors and has spent the year working with the county's other agencies such as Kids Central, Teen Court and the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.

For more information, go to www.youthrecoveryservices.com.