Find home for youth shelter

The Linn County Youth Shelter plays a critical role in helping young people in crisis. It's important that long-term plans for Linn County's emergency services to juveniles include some kind of shelter, separate from detention facilities for troubled juveniles.

Last year's flood destroyed the shelter on 10th Street NW in Cedar Rapids. Since that time, shelter services have been relocated to the Linn County Juvenile Detention Center near The Eastern Iowa Airport on the city's outskirts.

County supervisors recently decided to use the shelter's Federal Emergency Management Agency repair funding for other projects. They formed the Youth Services Study Committee, which includes stakeholders like Youth Shelter facility coordinator Jeff Werning, to make recommendations about how to move forward on the shelter.

Local leaders must maximize efficiencies, especially during this challenging financial period. However, unless there is strong indication other community resources can fill this need, the county should find a way to fund and continue this important service.

In the last fiscal year, it cost $842,800 to operate the youth shelter, which provides temporary homes for 12- to 18-year-olds who are experiencing a family crisis, who are runaways or who must be removed from their home.

The shelter, opened in 1975 as a groundbreaking endeavor in this state, provides 24-hour supervision, guidance, counseling and other programming.

Youths are admitted by parents, guardians, law enforcement, the Department of Human Services or the juvenile courts.

In the past few years, the number of children served by the shelter has been increasing - from 124 in fiscal 2004 to 202 kids in fiscal 2008.

At the temporary site, staff makes due in the temporary space, which has only seven beds - half as many as the former facility. Werning told us this week that since they began operating at the temporary location on July 21, the shelter has been at capacity a total of 131 days. It has turned away 50 children.

There are other concerns as well: There is no on-site classroom. It is farther away from parents, schools and services and has no easy access to bus routes.

Even though there is no contact between sheltered youths and those in detention, the institutional setting can send the wrong message to kids in crisis. This is not a permanent solution.

The committee is sure to discuss recent trends to shift resources from shelter beds to other child welfare emergency services. We agree it's best to help prevent youths from needing shelter services in the first place.

But a welcoming, accessible youth shelter remains a critical element among today's array of emergency assistance services for youths in crisis.