Carl DeLine

The Back Door trying to unite parents and kids

Authorities tell a street kid to return to her home and she struggles to find a way to tell them that she can’t–her mother passes her around as a sexual favor to her boyfriends.

A different mother calls the Back Door, an agency for street youth, to plead with them for help to get her daughter back. Her daughter is living on the street with a man and the mother is terrified she’ll get AIDS.

Staff at the Back Door think the two–the terrified street kid and the worried mother–have something they can learn from each other.

And they also think that society needs to learn from both women about street and domestic violence and how they are connected.

“We have parents on the phone, crying to us, they don’t know what to do when their kids are on the street,” Carl DeLine, director of the Back Door said Friday.

“We’re trying to get the two groups–the parents and the street youth–together to be a resource for each other,” he added.

The Back Door is a non-profit agency that has had a 68 percent success rate in getting youth off the street and into housing and jobs. It’s been operating since 1988, with a $325,000 annual budget, from $40,000 from the provincial Career Development and Employment Department. The bulk of its operating budget is donated by charity. It’s currently working with 160 youth.

Back Door has now received $20,000 in funding from the provincial Family and Social Services Department to attempt to prevent further violence in the lives of street youth.

It will use the money in three phases. First, street youth will be interviewed and a self help group of about 25 participants formed. Secondly, a self-help group will be created for parents and, finally, the two will be encouraged to meet together and learn from each other.

“Violence is so much a part of street youths’ lives and we’ve never really looked at that,” said DeLine, adding that a range of supports, including providing housing, jobs and drug treatment, are needed to separate them from that violence.

DeLine said there are about 8,000 youth in the city who do not know where they will be living from month to month.

He said research conducted by the Back Door indicates that many of these youth are unable to access basic social services.

Originally published June 3, 1991 by the Calgary Herald (Calgary, AB), credited to Joanne Ramondt.