At-risk youth stay close to home through dog-training program

A group of at-risk youth trained dogs like this one as part of a Close to Home initiative created by the Administration Children’s Services and the nonprofit Rising Ground. Photo courtesy of ACS

By Jonathan Sperling

A group of teens from across New York City who have gone through the juvenile justice system spent the summer learning the tricks of the dog-training trade from a certified master dog trainer, promoting positive behavioral changes and helping to create a new group of therapy dogs.

The program, part of a collaboration between the Administration Children’s Services and the nonprofit Rising Ground, gives at-risk teens the tools needed to promote positive behavioral change, while also teaching them valuable life and career skills.

Unlike past approaches to juvenile justice, the paid vocational program follows Close to Home, a reform initiative that allows city youth who are juvenile delinquents to be placed in residential care with ACS near their home communities.

“Historically, New York City had sent kids far upstate on a juvenile delinquency case if a judge had placed them. So they might be going to Buffalo, Syracuse, wherever, and their families couldn’t visit them,” Lisa Crook, Rising Ground’s vice president of Justice for Youth and Families, told the Eagle. 

As part of Rising Ground’s Summer Youth Employment, the group of more than a dozen teens were able to work a variety of paid jobs, including plumbing work, building gardens and more. This year marked a new addition to the lineup of jobs, however, as the youth trained therapy dogs. 

One of the dogs trained as part of the program was Crook’s six-and-a-half-year-old Yorkie.

“The kids were basically learning how to become dog trainers. In addition to learning the skills of training dogs, the dog trainer also did a lot of education around the various jobs in the dog world, so we talked a lot about grooming and the different layers of dog competition and the jobs associated with that,” Crook said.

If juvenile delinquents are sent upstate they often face difficulty progressing in their education, according to Crook. Credit earned at upstate schools is not always accepted by New York City school principals, potentially stunting kids’ education once they returned back home.

“The beautiful thing about Close to Home is that New York City kids stay in New York City. They go to New York City DOE schools and the DOE schools are run by a school district that has a particular set of skills and experience in getting our kids back on track with credits,” Crook said.

“It’s really a full wrap-around approach to give kids an opportunity to succeed,” she added.