EDENTON — In the living area of Edenton’s Methodist Home for Children, James pauses for a moment to consider his answer to the questions, “What are you working on while you’re here?” and “What do you want to learn from this place?”
James has been a resident at the Methodist Home for Children for almost eight months, which is the usual time most young people stay there. He is nearing his release time and ready to go home.
“I’m working on anger,” he said. “I have problems with that.”
James came to the home in search of help changing his attitudes and ways of dealing with problems that plagued him before they swamped his life and forced the court system to send him to places where more drastic remedies could be applied, like a juvenile detention center.
Actually, the place where James is staying right now is known unofficially as the Methodist Home for Children. Adopted by the Edenton United Methodist Church, it receives gifts, financial support, and other aid from the church. As a state-owned facility, it is officially known as the Chowan Multipurpose Home.
Jack Parker represents the Methodist Church and acts as a liaison between the church and the home, looking for ways to help the facility. He said the Methodist Home for Children is a lifeline that saves kids who are drowning in problems and self-destructive behaviors that threaten to pull them under.
“We want to help support our young people and show them better ways to handle their lives,” Parker said. “Some of them come here because of trouble at home. Others come here because they’ve gotten in legal trouble. The home helps inspire them to do better.”
Adolescent children come to the home either as a moment of “time out” from home lives they find unworkable or as a decompression following confinement in a juvenile detention facility or other state-run, court-imposed program. Either way, the object is to prepare them for re-entry into family life, school, and a world that, up to this point, has proven too challenging. They must learn new ways of coping, managing stress, controlling anger, and managing impulsive behaviors.
“The Group Home’s job is to help the kids transition back into living either at homes or, in some cases, aftercare,” said Darnel Marsh, a member of the home’s direct support staff. “The kids are court-ordered here after they serve their time in a juvenile detention facility” or are identified as needing intervention by the court and sent as a break from their home life.
Marsh said the home operates on a principle called “satiation.” The word has a different meaning in the home than outside it. Here, satiation means to fill a receptacle, the children, with enough input that there is no room for the destructive behaviors that sent them there.
That input comes in the form of rules and goals. Every moment of every day, each of the eight home residents is trying to earn more of the 2,000 signatures they need to complete the program. Signatures are given when they successfully complete a task, follow a rule, or just treat the staff with proper respect.
As a resident earns more signatures, they are awarded more privileges. Those privileges might be as simple as having an occasional ice cream after dinner, but in the initially restrictive environment they find when entering the home, each privilege becomes a precious commodity.
In small increments, the youth learn that life rewards behavior that is within society’s guidelines. And hopefully, over those eight months, they learn that defiant behaviors and resisting authority are strategies that just don’t work.
Special programs in anger management, substance abuse, sports, hygiene, and physical fitness, as well as education, are all part of the Group Home experience. The residents don’t leave the home except on field trips or organized activities. They are home-schooled at the facility, preparing them for re-entry into regular school when their time at the Methodist Home is done.
Keisha Drew, program director at the Methodist Home, said she has seen successes.
“Antwan came in for attitude problems,” she said, referring to a recent resident who’s been released. “He was just angry all the time. You couldn’t say anything to him, but he made it all the way through satiation to what we call ‘self-determination.’ By the end of the program, he was actually doing really well.”
Now graduated from the program, he checks in at least every week, Drew said.
“He calls up to say, ‘Hey.’ He actually learned how to channel his emotions and communicate. He needed a moment to step away,” she said.
Kids have gone on from the Methodist Home for Children to lead productive lives, finish school, and get good jobs. But Drew said there are also heartbreaking moments, too. One graduate was recently killed in an act of gun violence.
Both Drew and Marsh came to their jobs at the Methodist Home from unconventional backgrounds. Drew came from a career as a corrections officer working at the Bertie Correctional Institution. Marsh came from a series of jobs, including retail work where he learned people skills. Both said they learned things at their previous employment that have become staples in their work.
There is no educational, licensing, or training requirement for the job. Working at the home is just more complicated than that. Applicants are chosen for their combination of people skills and the ability to enforce the system’s rules with kids who have spent most of their young lives defying authority. Most applicants are not ready for the job and Drew said working at the home is not about earning a paycheck.
The Edenton Methodist Home, formerly known at the Pet Thompson Home for Children, is located in a remote area in north Edenton. The program does not encourage visitors but anyone wishing to help out may contact the Edenton United Methodist Church at (252) 482-3269.
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