Reporter Patty Machelor's Fave Five

New integrated care center to put focus on children with autism, other needs

This story is a favorite because it’s about how a program and school that’s helping hundreds of local families will now reach even more children in need.

─ Patty Machelor

Agonizing over school choices or spending hour after hour driving to appointments are among the harder aspects of raising a child with special needs.

For Tucson residents whose children have autism spectrum diagnoses, even a simple park visit can be difficult if their child tends to wander or impulsively run off, as many parks are located near roadways.

These challenges that parents and caregivers face are being taken into consideration at the new Intermountain Centers’ Integrated Care Center for Children, which is under construction now and is scheduled to open in January on Tucson’s west side.

The center, at 401 N. Bonita Ave., will include a clinic for young children with autism spectrum diagnoses, as well as health and therapeutic services for children with a wide variety of challenges.

The building, which previously belonged to Pima Community College, will also house the Intermountain Academy K-12 school for children with autism and a transition to work program for children with cognitive and developmental delays.

There will also be a diagnostic and evaluation program to help families of children with autism get answers sooner and services faster.

“If you try to get this through the state, it can take up to a year,” said Paul O’Rourke, vice president of development and communications for Intermountain Centers. “Here, it will be 45 days.”

And if Tucson’s mayor and council approve it at Tuesday’s meeting, Intermountain will also open a fenced-in family park southwest of the center. The proposed plan includes specialized play setups that encourage socializing, a music zone and statues of animals for sensory exposure.

“It will be a safe space for them,” O’Rourke said of the park. “There’s nothing like it here.”

“It was like I was stuck in time”

Tucson mother Mariela Saad moved to Tucson five years ago after her marriage to her children’s father, Mouhannad Saad, ended soon after their son was born. Saad said while her kids’ father visits regularly and supports them well, their lives, until recently, have been difficult.

Her children, now 9 and 6, have both been diagnosed with autism — her son just in the last couple of months via Intermountain — and their challenges are quite different.

Gibrael, who is the younger child, tends to run when he’s upset, while Camila is a wanderer, she said. In order to keep them safe, she installed an alarm on her door.

It’s especially scary because her daughter will talk to anyone and does not sense danger well. Her son struggles to control his temper.

Initially, her son was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other delays, but not autism. She says she was told he was too young to check for autism, and that boys are harder to diagnose than girls.

“It was hell,” she said of that time leading up to his autism diagnosis. “I couldn’t figure out what I was going to do. It was like I was stuck in time.”

Saad said she is relieved now to have a plan in place for both kids. Her daughter already attends Intermountain Academy and her son will begin next fall.

About 200 kids wait-listed

Intermountain Centers started out as the Southwest Indian Youth Center, a program on Mount Lemmon developed by David Giles for Native American youths in the early 1970s.

When government funding for that dried up, Giles started Intermountain Centers for Human Development, which now provide a variety of services for families and children throughout the state.

The Intermountain Academy, currently at 1100 W. Fresno St., will begin offering K-12 classes at the new center on Jan. 6. The school is private, with tuition at $30,000 per year, but there are many opportunities for financial help.

O’Rourke said the school will be able to take about 130 students at the new location, but will still have a waiting list. On average, about 200 kids are waiting for a spot at any given time, he said.

The growth of the school isn’t about space, he said, but rather finding qualified teachers and teachers’ aides who are certified to teach using Applied Behavioral Analysis, a type of therapy that helps children with autism spectrum challenges.

Intermountain is a “one-of-a-kind center” and the only school for children with autism offering diagnostic services, said Brie Seward, associate director of the Autism Society of Southern Arizona.

“What is unique about Intermountain Academy is that it incorporates Applied Behavior Analysis services and a child with autism can start as early as kindergarten,” she said.

Seward said she encourages families that are waiting for a diagnosis to start therapy programs, such as occupational or speech therapy, right away. The earlier the child gets assistance, the better.

“There are still steps a family can take while they wait in order to help address their child’s developmental concerns,” she said.

“There are people out there who will understand”

Last spring, nine students were the first to graduate from Intermountain Academy, including the son of Tucson resident Eric Peterson.

That day, and the years leading up to it, included many breakthroughs for the family. Peterson said they tried to have their son attend public schools but it became increasingly difficult as he aged. By 10th grade, he was regressing and they knew they had to move him.

They visited Intermountain and were relieved to find a school that was set up to help children with autism succeed, he said. Soft lighting was one of the first things Peterson noticed.

“He was so comfortable,” he said of his son. When Peterson looks back on those early days now, he says he can hardly believe it.

“It sometimes feels like 10 years have gone by, but it’s only been three years,” he said. “When we started meeting other families, we didn’t feel so alone. You get really socially isolated.”

Peterson’s son is now attending Project Lift through Intermountain, a blend of more schooling and work which will help him transition to work.

He encourages other parents of children with similar challenges not to give up.

“There are people out there who will understand and support your kid,” he said. “They will grow, it will just be a different timeline.”

New constable effort, grant program aim to avert evictions

This story is a favorite because these two constables are trying to make improvements that could help people avoid homelessness.

─ Patty Machelor

Sometimes there’s just 15 minutes until homelessness.

That’s the amount of time Pima County residents who are being evicted have to gather some things and sort out what to do next.

Preventing that mad rush is behind a new pilot program that constables in two of the county’s busiest precincts started trying out last week.

So far this year, roughly 13,000 county residents have been court-ordered to leave their houses, apartments or trailers for failing to pay rent, with an average of 100 cases being processed daily at Pima County Justice Court.

People get evicted for a variety of reasons, and many of those who are not, live constantly on the brink of it.

Of the poor renter households in Tucson earning between 50% and 100% of the federal poverty level, 92.5% lived in a way that was not sustainable including spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs, a 2018 University of Arizona survey found.

Tenants facing eviction only show up for the hearings about 10% of the time. The reasons, according to people who work these cases, include lack of childcare, transportation or understanding of the process. Sometimes they can’t miss work while other times their lives are unmanageable because of drug or alcohol addiction, or unaddressed mental health challenges.

Whatever the reasons, it’s right at this moment that two local constables, Bennett Bernal and Kristen Randall, are hoping to bring about what Randall calls “a small difference.”

Here’s how: Since many people don’t realize how quickly they can be evicted — it’s often just five days after the court hearing and then within 15 minutes of the constable’s arrival — they are shocked and unprepared when it occurs.

The court documents from the hearing they missed offer some of these details, but since the court mails them out, the documents often arrive after the person or family has already been evicted.

And so what Bernal and Randall are doing is helping the tenants by hand-delivering the documents, called minute entries, so people have a little more time to decide what to do next. The constables also provide information about shelters and services as well as paperwork about a relatively new county grant that could help residents who qualify avoid an eviction.

Some of the people Randall has evicted under court order in midtown’s busy Precinct 8 have special needs or are elderly or have children, all factors that are hard to manage in 15 minutes.

Some don’t have transportation, she said, and so they are left standing on the sidewalk with a few bags, searching for a ride.

“I want to get things in place so if and when the eviction happens,” Randall says, “we’re not just going around and throwing people out.”

Substance abuse, mental issues

County and state employees, as well as caseworkers and members of local social service agencies, met here last week to talk about ways to prevent evictions.

It’s an ongoing conversation with no easy answers.

The most common theme: People are being evicted because their lives are chaotic due to substance abuse and untreated mental illnesses.

“We have to focus on the bigger issues if we are really going to make a difference,” Constable Bernal said at Wednesday’s meeting. His work includes the North Oracle Road corridor and some distressed areas in the ZIP code area 85705. “Rarely do I go to a place and hear people say simply, ‘I lost my job.’ ”

One thing the caseworkers and agency members discussed is the importance of buying people a bit more time in case there’s a way to help stabilize the situation.

To that end, the Arizona Department of Housing is providing Pima County households with rental assistance through a handful of local agencies, including the Salvation Army, Portable Practical Educational Preparation (PPEP), Interfaith Community Services, Primavera and Chicanos por la Causa.

Since August, around 120 individuals and families have received the one-time sum of $1,000 to help them avoid an eviction. The goal is to help several hundred more families by Jan. 31, 2020, when the offering expires.

People can receive this assistance if they are able to prove they can cover their living expenses for at least 90 days afterwards.

The bigger objective: help them achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

“We are shooting to reach at least 70 tenants per month, between all of the agencies,” said Gloria Valenzuela, program coordinator with the county’s Community Action Agency.

Making sure families have a place to go

On the first day of trying the new pilot program last week, Randall sets out to deliver four hearing documents.

Stop No. 1 is a small trailer park on East Lee Street. The first tenant is not home, and the door to the trailer is padlocked. From inside, a dog barks. Randall tapes the documents to the door, along with a sheet about local resources, and then moves on to the next trailer.

At this one, a woman answers. It’s not her name on the lease, Randall soon learns, but the woman lives there and says she attended the eviction hearing. She is shocked when she learns they will need to move out Monday. She thought the landlord agreed they had 30 days to figure out a plan.

Randall urges the woman to talk to the landlord again, to see if the eviction will be Monday or if she will get more time to prepare and move. She gives her some information to help her prepare in case the eviction does occur.

After leaving that residence, she sees a man studying the documents taped up at the first trailer. They talk, and she learns he’s the uncle of the tenant who is facing eviction. He says he’ll try to help his nephew figure it out, and thanks her for the paperwork.

By Friday, Randall has twice the number of documents to deliver. She says that’s typical for the area she covers, which includes many impoverished midtown neighborhoods around East Grant Road and North Alvernon Way.

To illustrate, she points out that the eviction fees owed for her precinct added up to $61,000 in September, second only to Bernal’s Precinct 6 which amounted to $68,000. The next highest was $55,000.

The amounts owed for other precincts were significantly lower.

People who are evicted are charged for the mileage of the constable, which is $2.40 per mile, as well as additional court fees. The minimum a person would be charged for being evicted is $75.

On Friday, Randall knocks on an apartment door where an elderly woman in the early stages of dementia lives. The woman’s daughter-in-law is there.

They talk about options as they stand in the hallway on the third floor of Catalina Towers, 2475 N. Haskell Drive. Randall tells the women about the one-time grant that could help, gives them the paperwork and urges them to apply quickly.

They shake hands as she leaves, and she tells them she hopes she doesn’t see them next week.

In time, Randall hopes delivering the court’s minute entries will mean she’s carrying out fewer evictions. Some people might decide to move quickly and avoid the costly eviction, she said. At the very least, she hopes they will be more prepared to move if an eviction does occur.

“If we can just buy people a few days, the outcomes are much better,” she said. “I want to make sure these families have a place to go.”

Old motels, new ideas part of blossoming vision for Tucson's 85705

A favorite about a part of town that needs a lot of help, and how the work of a few can make such a big difference.

─ Patty Machelor

Something far more wholesome than by-the-hour rentals could be in store for the No-Tel Motel.

At least that’s the wish of Tom Cowdry, who works just a block or so up North Oracle Road overseeing a housing community for low-income residents, many of them elderly, living with a disability or both.

People call and stop in Miracle Square regularly, asking Cowdry if there’s space at this one-time motel that became a small apartment complex in the early 1980s.

Cowdry — who has run Miracle Square as a nonprofit for about 20 years, along with volunteer Lynn Sagara — wants to help more people than they can right now.

And buying both the No-Tel Motel, at 2425 N. Oracle Road, and the nearby Tiki Motel, at 2649 N. Oracle Road, would allow Cowdry and Sagara to say “yes” to at least 37 more people who need safe, affordable housing.

Owner Bity Patel said he would like to sell both properties, but making that happen is far from simple.

Cowdry met last week with officials from the city and the Tucson Fire Department to talk about zoning, fire safety and other logistical issues.

What’s next is finding enough money to buy, if not these properties, then other sites near Miracle Square, 2601 N. Oracle Road.

Such efforts are part of one of the larger areas of focus for Tucson’s “Thrive in the ’05” revitalization project: to improve existing structures and create more affordable housing.

The city’s 85705 ZIP code area includes several small neighborhoods that are among Tucson’s most distressed due to poverty, high unemployment, crime and scant resources. The crime rate in the area is more than double that of other Tucson neighborhoods.

About 12,000 people live in the area and the median household income is $23,354, says a 2018 study by the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. That’s significantly lower than Tucson’s median income, which is $32,889.

The unemployment rate is 8.9%, nearly double that of the city overall, and about 74% of the people are renters instead of homeowners. About 65% of the households do not have a vehicle.

The project, still in its planning phase, encompasses a 2.6-square-mile area in 85705, loosely bounded by Miracle Mile to the north, Speedway to the south, Stone Avenue to the east and I-10 to the west.

The effort, a collaboration between the city, the Tucson Police Department, Arizona State University and Pima Community College, includes $2.3 million in funding so far through grants from the U.S. departments of Justice and of Housing and Urban Development.

Part of that initial sum includes a Choice Neighborhoods $1.3 million planning grant for housing, with another $35 million the city can apply for next fall to carry out its plan.

An asset to the neighborhood

Corky Poster, a lead architect with the firm Poster Mirto McDonald, is helping the city with one of the largest parts of this transformation: restoring the Tucson House, the high-rise public housing building at 1501 N. Oracle Road, while also planning for hundreds of new affordable and market rate housing units in the area.

This sort of challenge isn’t new for Poster’s firm.

About three miles south of the Tucson House is another area the firm redesigned about 20 years ago: Posadas Sentinel, a neighborhood that replaced the demolished Connie Chambers Public Housing.

The area now includes 120 affordable-housing town homes as well as 60 units for people with low to moderate incomes including two- three- or four-bedroom layouts, as well as a recreation center, library and a Head Start school. The adjacant Santa Rosa Park is no longer an imposing barrier between poorly maintained low-income housing and more upscale homes.

Instead, the new colorful town homes, the park and other offerings have made it into an attractive neighborhood hub.

And that’s exactly what Poster envisions re-creating around the Tucson House. A grocery store could be built on adjacent property, he said, or a daycare center. Or both.

“We want to make the Tucson House an asset to the adjacent neighborhoods,” he said.

Poster is fond of the old 17-story building, once luxury apartments that sat in the middle of the former gateway into the city. The property, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places, became public housing for the elderly in the 1970s.

Over the years, keeping up with maintenance has become a challenge.

By the mid-1990s, Poster said, chunks of concrete were falling from the balconies. His firm oversaw about $10 million in fix-ups in 1997, but today about $50 million is needed to provide a new electrical system, new plumbing, upgrades to the heating and cooling systems, and new elevators.

Some of the flooring also needs structural reinforcement, he said.

In order to carry out these repairs, the city can supplement whatever it has, or gets from HUD, with low-income-housing tax credits, which offer dollar-for-dollar credit for affordable housing investments. The program, which was created under the Tax Reform Act of 1986, gives incentives for people in the private sector to help provide affordable housing.

“Nearly all of the quality-of-life concerns that my staff and I hear regularly from Tucson House residents relate to the fact that this is an aging building that has not received the amount of maintenance funds necessary to keep it in tip-top shape,” said City Councilman Paul Durham.

“Whether we are talking about elevator issues or antiquated security systems, it all relates to needing additional funding to keep this historic building serving its residents well.”

Before the work begins on the building, Poster will first focus on creating new affordable housing where Tucson House residents can live while the work is completed. Then the new housing will be used for other people in need of help.

“What we’ve been emphasizing to all residents during these conversations is that no one will be left without housing,” said Alison Miller, lead planner with Tucson’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

“The most likely option will be to renovate each of the two (adjoining) towers at a time, moving residents either out to new housing or across to a vacant unit in the other tower, depending on preference.”

Options for the Tucson House

Since the mid-1990s nationwide, more than 200,000 public-housing buildings have been lost, said Will Fischer, a senior policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In order for the city to get the money it needs for the Tucson House, HUD has to like the plan that’s currently being formulated, a plan that will eventually be presented in exhaustive detail as the city tries to secure more funding.

Who lives there, and how it benefits the residents and the city, are all significant factors.

One option would be to leave the population as it is, with 41% being elderly, 48% being non-elderly people with disabilities and 11% being formerly homeless people.

Leaving the population the same, however, is highly unlikely to get HUD’s attention.

The other extreme would be to sell the Tucson House to a private investor who could rehabilitate it and rent it out at market rates.

In between those options would be having the formerly homeless people move to other suitable housing and, instead, bringing in assisted-living services.

Or the city could stop having non-elderly people with disabilities live there in order to provide other housing choices.

Perhaps mixed-income housing for elderly people, including assisted living?

The community conversation continues and, ultimately, will be decided by Tucson’s mayor and City Council.

Up the way, meanwhile, the much smaller Miracle Square was converted to housing for low-income elderly and people living with disabilities back in 1982 with money borrowed from the local industrial development authority.

Originally a project of Tucson Metropolitan Ministries, it’s now operated as a nonprofit.

Cowdry became the director in 1990 after finishing a 25-year career with the American Red Cross in Tucson. He earns $10,000 a year for his dedication, and that amount doesn’t seem to bother him.

Helping people is his current mission. He dreams of building tiny houses on the property so more people could live there, and have a place to cook a meal or watch a show.

Housing that helps vulnerable people

About a year ago, nursing students with the University of Arizona began to help out at Miracle Square and soon discovered that about 54% of the people living there were malnourished.

Over the last year, with some medical advice and more attention paid to what’s in the small food pantry next to Cowdry’s office, residents have learned better ways to make higher quality, low-budget meals.

Attention to the issue has paid off: A recent reassessment found about 32% of the people are not getting proper calories and nutrients now.

And the work is continuing.

Those are similar to the objectives that Carmen Noriega, director of development and marketing for the St. Elizabeth Health Center, said they have in mind at the Tucson House.

As part of the revitalization effort, a satellite clinic is being planned for the first floor of the Tucson House, with appointment hours available one or two days per week to start. The clinic should open sometime in 2020.

About half of the residents at the Tucson House are already registered as patients at St. Elizabeth’s main clinic, at 140 W. Speedway.

The goal will be to help more residents with nutrition and prevent them from turning to vending machines for their daily calories.

With the help of the Tucson House residents’ council, there is a plan to restart a food pantry there soon.

The majority of the people who live in the Tucson House are elderly or disabled, or both. About 57% of the residents take in less than $10,000 per year while 39% have between $10,000 and $20,000 available per year.

Becky Dupree was living in a camper without heating or cooling when she got a call, about three years ago, that a Tucson House apartment was available.

She was thrilled.

“I love it here,” said Dupree, who served in the Air Force in the 1970s. She said she has great neighbors “as well as the same issues you might have in any neighborhood.”

She lives on the 10th floor and said she enjoys amazing views from her living room couch. Fireworks displays and thunderstorms are her favorite things to watch.

Dupree says that despite of the ZIP code area being known for crime, the residents she knows are interested in building community and looking out for one another.

“You get to know the faces and you get to know who belongs here and who doesn’t,” she said.

The Community Food Bank delivers monthly food boxes to Tucson House and several local church groups also deliver food donations. The Pima County Library Book Mobile is a frequent, popular visitor.

The residents and council have been organizing more events to bring people together, and this includes helping neighbors out with a meal.

“Through Thrive in the ’05, we’re developing a leadership training curriculum with residents and planning monthly community-building (events),” said Liz Morales, the new housing director for the city.

Norma Adame helps run the resident council and has lived at the Tucson House for four years. Since February, she said she’s noticed a shift, with more involvement from the city and her community. She feels safer now than she has in several years.

“We take care of each other more than before, we communicate much better about who does and who does not live here,” she said. “It’s becoming more and more of a community.”

Tucson police will deal with dealers a new way to help 85705 with drug problem

This story is a favorite because it explores how the Tucson Police Department is changing its approach and working together with social workers and others to try to help criminals find better ways of living.

─ Patty Machelor

Nowadays, it’s heroin and crystal meth.

A decade ago, crack cocaine.

Whatever the drug, dealers working Tucson neighborhoods within the 85705 ZIP code drive up crime rates and hinder residents’ efforts to improve an area damaged by years of hardship.

The Tucson Police Department and local sociologists working on a new revitalization effort called Thrive in the ’05 are planning a different way to address this problem.

In early 2020, they will begin enacting a nationally recognized program called Drug Market Intervention.

Put simply, people that police catch dealing drugs will be given a choice: be arrested or turn your life around.

If the drug seller chooses the latter, a team comprised of law enforcement, social workers and community organizations will help the person make a plan toward a legitimate job.

This might include setting up job training or finishing a GED as well as finding new housing.

The idea is to use existing resources as much as possible, although some federal funding could also be used.

The program, which has been enacted in nearly 30 cities nationwide, is based on reversing the stereotype that people who sell drugs are incapable of change.

“For a long time, there was a view that people want to live in these conditions, with the violence and the chaos, and that’s not the case,” said Heather Perez, who offers training and technical assistance for Drug Market Intervention as part of her job with Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice. She is currently training people to use this approach in Santiago, Chile.

When Tucson adopts this new method for the Thrive in the ’05 project — a 2.6-square-mile area that’s loosely bounded by Miracle Mile to the north, Speedway to the south, Stone Avenue to the east and I-10 to the west — only nonviolent offenders will be given the choice.

Tucson police Lt. James Wakefield, who works in 85705 and is the police liaison for the revitalization effort, recalled a crack dealer who served a 10-year prison term and then, not long after his release, was back in 85705 selling heroin.

This dealer, a violent offender with a long history of trouble, might never find his way to a better life. But Wakefield said he believes others could if they are given the support and the incentive to do something better with their lives.

An “Open-air drug market” for sellers, buyers

People living at the Tucson House — once a luxury hotel and now one of the city’s largest public housing units — say dealers and prostitutes often roam the hallways and stairwells, as well as the city park behind the building at 1501 N. Oracle Road.

Parking lots, street corners and washes are also popular spots for dealers in 85705, and this sort of easy flow of sellers and buyers makes the area what’s called an “open-air drug market.”

One way to tell if there’s an open-air, or overt, market is if someone unfamiliar with the area could easily buy drugs there, said Katie Stalker, an assistant professor of social work with Arizona State University in Tucson and associate director of the ASU Office of Community Health, Engagement and Resiliency. Overt markets are challenging to address but it’s critical for revitalization.

Drug markets drive down property values and business, and sour people on spending time in public places like city parks.

Drug-ridden areas also leave young people vulnerable to crime and unhealthy life choices, and has contributed to 85705 becoming one of the 10 areas statewide with the highest drug overdose rates.

The area has one of the highest rates of calls statewide to the Department of Child Safety for allegations of abuse and neglect.

It also generates the highest number of calls to police for drug-related activity and violent crimes in the city.

Tucson police Capt. John Leavitt, commander of the department’s Counter Narcotics Alliance, said about 95% of the problems faced by young people police come in contact with revolve around drugs and alcohol. Single-parent households in low-income areas are often mired in such problems, he said.

“All of those things combined create the environment we see in the ’05,” he said. “The cycle of poverty, at least in Tucson, means the poorest people get put together in an environment where criminals take advantage of them.”

Wakefield said the people dealing the drugs are often, but not always, also using them.

“You can see how it keeps getting perpetuated,” Wakefield said, “cycle after cycle.”

Mary Ellen Brown, an assistant professor of sociology at ASU in Tucson and director of the Thrive in the ’05 Community-Based Crime Reduction Initiative, said she saw how a similar program worked to reduce violent crime in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She’s excited to see similar changes brought about in 85705.

“It’s an opportunity to streamline communication and increase effectiveness (between) law enforcement and community partners to reduce violent crime and drug-related crimes, by shutting down the open-air drug market,” said Brown, who is also director of the ASU Office of Community Health, Engagement and Resiliency.

“This intervention will build critical community/police relations in the ’05 ZIP code where relationships have historically been strained.”

Commitment, Organization leads to crime reductions

Strong leadership is critical for the interventions to work, said Perez of Michigan State University. The people who are involved have to stay organized and committed.

There are key steps to follow, outlined in publications on the interventions, including making realistic assessments of available resources and services and leaving enough time to get set up before starting the program.

It’s also important to have a person whose job is dedicated to organizing services and maintaining data.

Expectations need to be clear, the former drug offender’s family and friends should be involved if that’s helpful, and meetings have to be held regularly to see how things are going for the person trying to change.

“If they don’t follow through with what’s been promised,” Perez said of the intervention steps, “then it can just blow up.”

Michigan State University helps with training and implementing Drug Market Intervention with support from the Department of Justice. About 30 cities nationwide, including Chicago and Atlanta, have used this approach, which first got started around 2003 in High Point, North Carolina.

Marty Sumner, who retired as chief of police in High Point in 2016, said police were so thrilled with how well the interventions worked, they now use a similar approach for cases of domestic violence as well as for gang activity.

Sumner was a patrol officer with the department there in 2003 when a new police chief was hired. They toured the neighborhoods together and talked about how the drug market was flourishing to the detriment of just about everything else.

“They were just doing it right out in the open,” he said. “Perhaps we had become a bit too accustomed to it.”

The problem seemed insurmountable.

That’s when the new chief brought in criminologist David Kennedy, then with Harvard University and now with the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Kennedy suggested a new way to intervene, a technique that involved helping dealers change their lives. Within a few years, the High Point Police Department’s success became the blueprint for Drug Market Intervention.

“We saw dramatic reductions in violent crime and drug activity within just 30 days,” said Sumner, who has since worked as a consultant for communities trying this approach. “The results were immediate and the impact, dramatic.”

Over the next four years, police used interventions in four more neighborhoods with similar success and, over time, saw great reductions in drug activity and violent crime.

One of Sumner’s favorite success stories involved a drug dealer whose lifestyle left him estranged from his family. After this dealer stopped using and selling drugs, he went to culinary school and was eventually reunited with his family. Not every case was such a success story, Sumner said, but that was expected. The goal was to help some of the dealers while also making the communities safer.

“We removed the dangerous people,” he said, “and redeemed the people who could be redeemed.”

Pascua Yaqui working to keep foster children connected to tribal culture

I enjoyed writing this story because I learned a great deal about a community I’d never visited before, and found the people involved with helping very inspiring.

─ Patty Machelor

Phillip Molina had a rough start, constantly being moved and shuttled among lots of strangers.

That’s sadly typical for many teens and children in foster care, especially those living in group homes as he did. But Molina, now 24, was eventually able to return to his roots in the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.

And while much of his growing up happened off the reservation, his chances for a better future improved when he was welcomed to the home of a Pascua Yaqui relative.

Group homes are something experts agree should be avoided for kids — especially for the long term — because children need one-on-one time and attention from an adult.

It’s now also widely accepted that when children can’t be with their parents, placing them with kin is far less traumatic than having them live with strangers, not only because relatives are familiar but also because there is a greater chance of learning about family culture and heritage.

This grounding in tradition and customs is an especially important part of the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA.

The law requires state caseworkers to notify tribes when a child taken into custody might be a tribal member or eligible to become one. After that, depending on the circumstances, the case could be transferred to the jurisdiction of the tribe.

ICWA, often referred to as foster care’s “gold standard,” emphasizes placements with relatives over strangers’ homes and family settings over group homes. If a tribal relative, a non-tribal relative or a tribal member’s home is not available, the next-best placement would be the family of another Native American tribe.

The federal law was adopted in 1978 after decades in which up to 35 percent of Native American and Alaska Native children and teens were removed, without tribal consent, by state child welfare and private adoption agencies. About 85 percent of these children were placed in non-tribal foster and adoptive homes, far from their tribal communities and extended families.

Gauging how states and tribes are doing with ICWA compliance can be challenging due to privacy restrictions, a lack of data and, sometimes, a reluctance to talk about a law that’s being challenged in courts around the country. No one with the Pascua Yaqui Attorney General’s Office contacted for this article would agree to be interviewed.

But a recent report shows the Pascua Yaqui tribe has more than doubled the number of ICWA children being placed with tribal relatives or tribal members over the last decade.

The challenge is in finding more ICWA-compliant foster homes among Pascua Yaqui tribal members, who live throughout Arizona as well as on a reservation a few miles west of Tucson.

Finally at home

Until he was in high school, Molina mostly lived off the reservation in group homes, behavioral health centers and, twice, in therapeutic foster care with families that were not Pascua Yaqui or related to him.

Sometimes he landed as far away as Maricopa County, but when he was here, closer to home, he’d often run away to his grandmother’s house. Molina says he longed to live there, with his two older siblings, but there wasn’t room.

As a young adult, he now sees that he was stressed by moving so often and having to live with people new to him. As he grew and learned to better deal with the anger and grief that often overwhelmed him, Molina longed for one-on-one attention.

That wish was fulfilled when David Moreno, a Pascua Yaqui traditional arts instructor, offered Molina a place in his home.

Moreno first met Molina years before because they are distantly related. They became reacquainted at a group home for Pascua Yaqui youths in Marana, where Moreno teaches teens about their culture, art and history.

Molina, a budding artist, found he could talk to Moreno about anything and relished the conversations. Moreno tried to teach him that creating art of any kind requires patience and that the mind can be soothed by focusing on a sketch or painting a piece.

Moreno became licensed as a foster father through the reservation’s behavioral-health services, so he was able to receive a stipend to help him care for Molina.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes in the youth, a lot of positive changes that you wouldn’t think could happen,” said Moreno, who believes strongly in having kids live with family members or tribal members whenever possible.

Molina said he plans to attend Pima Community College soon. He lived with Moreno for about three years while he completed high school and then, like Moreno did before him, he left the reservation to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

He hopes to eventually become an art therapist and, again like Moreno, to help Pascua Yaqui youths.

Shortage of tribal foster homes

A shortage of tribal foster homes means teens like Molina — the age group hardest to place in any community — often end up living in group homes off tribal lands, said social worker Jennifer Gutierrez Bryant. Bryant, who is Pascua Yaqui, has been working with tribal teens and children for more than a decade.

The group home where she now works, the one in Marana where Molina once lived, houses up to eight boys, ages 12 to 17.

“It’s a holding area until they turn 18,” she said. “There’s just no other place for them to go.”

The licensing process is a big hurdle for families who want to provide a foster home, she said, and there’s little funding for unlicensed providers.

From a tribal perspective, where a child is placed could cover a wide range of people since kinship is a broad term on reservations, said Kate Fort, a staff attorney and adjunct professor for the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University’s College of Law.

“The key,” she said, “is for the tribe to have a voice about what foster home the child goes to.”

An advantage here is that Pima County’s neighboring tribes have attorneys who become involved in cases when ICWA applies, said Kathleen Quigley, a founder of the Arizona State, Tribal and Federal Court Forum. Some tribal communities do not have attorneys available, said Quigley, who is presiding judge of Pima County’s Juvenile Court Center.

Since January 2008 through the end of last December in Pima County, there have been 1,289 children with foster-care court cases, or dependencies, in which a tribe intervened.

Arizona’s tribal members, in a 2017 survey by the state’s Department of Child Safety, recommended better training so DCS specialists can more quickly recognize possible Indian Child Welfare Act cases.

Getting notification to the tribe quickly is critical, to avoid having a child’s placement disrupted unnecessarily from another, non-ICWA foster placement if there is an ICWA home available.

The tribes also requested having access to DCS case documents when it is an ICWA case as well as more ICWA training for tribal child welfare workers.

Lastly, the suggestions included establishing rules about how tribal members should go about contacting DCS workers about ICWA cases and improving on timeliness for notices to tribes.

DCS hired its first tribal liaison in 2014 and now has two units, both based in Maricopa County, that handle ICWA cases by helping coordinate efforts between the state and the tribes.

The agency cannot go on tribal lands and remove a child, but DCS does get involved when a Native American child is removed from a home that’s not on a reservation.

Caseworkers are required to ask in every case whether a child is enrolled with a tribe or is eligible to be enrolled.

“One of the biggest issues is the availability of ICWA-compliant foster homes willing or able to take in these children,” said Ken Poocha, who has been the DCS tribal liaison since 2017.

DCS has started recruitment efforts to get more foster homes for Native American children both on and off tribal lands, he said.

Department of Child Safety data from June 2018 shows there were 57 Native American foster families statewide — not including those on reservations — while there were 707 Native American children in out-of-home placements.

Also helping the Pascua Yaqui Tribe is the Tiwahe Initiative, which was started by President Barack Obama to help a handful of selected tribes better the lives of their children, youths and families.

As part of this initiative, and according to a recent report by Casey Family Programs, the tribe hired more staff to help with ICWA cases and increased parental reunification by 35 percent, up from 13 percent of the cases in 2006 to 48 percent in 2015.

Around 91 percent of the cases handled by the ICWA team resulted in ICWA-approved placements in 2016; in 2017, the rate dropped slightly to 86 percent.

Casey Family Programs is working with the Pascua Yaqui Attorney General’s Office and with social services and enrollment offices to help with the Indian Child Welfare Act as well as several other areas related to child and family well-being.

Other ICWA-related findings in the report include:

• Between 2008 and 2017, the average number of cases per month that resulted in a Pascua Yaqui relative foster placement increased from 31 to nearly 55.
• The number of ICWA cases increased significantly between 2008 to 2017, going from 45 open cases per month and an average of 78 children to 73 cases per month and 127 children.

The increase in ICWA cases being recognized is likely due to a combination of factors, said Fred Urbina, former attorney general for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. These include more ICWA workers available to help when the state opens a case, as well as faster notification from the Department of Child Safety to the tribe.

Another factor is that, historically, Native American children have been disproportionately represented in states’ foster-care systems and, with the increased training and staff looking at ICWA eligibility, they might just be recognized more regularly now.

That inherent bias, which also includes other minority children, was studied by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which found that Native American and Alaskan Indian families were two times more likely to be investigated, two times more likely to have reported abuse and neglect substantiated, and four times more likely to have their children removed and placed in foster care than their Caucasian counterparts.

Goldwater challenge

In Texas last fall, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act violates the U.S. Constitution by favoring Native American families in adopting Native American children because of race. It’s the most recent of several challenges to the act nationwide.

The case came before O’Connor’s court because a non-Native couple was suing to adopt a Cherokee Nation child. It was also a blow to ICWA because O’Connor found it unlawful for the federal government to “dictate” state policies.

The ruling, which has been appealed, was a win for the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, which has challenged ICWA about a dozen times nationwide since 2011.

The Goldwater Institute says that having ICWA in place leaves Native American children vulnerable because there are not enough ICWA-compliant foster and adoptive homes.

One case involves four Arizona families and is part of a petition for review recently filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by Goldwater. The non-Native couples were able to adopt their Native American foster children, but only after what Goldwater argues was an unreasonable wait and high cost due to ICWA.

Under ICWA, Goldwater argues, tribal children and teens are subjected to “a separate, less-protective set of laws solely because of their race.”

Phoenix attorney April Erin Olson counters Goldwater’s claim, saying being Native American is about tribal membership, not race. She said many ICWA cases she worked on are being appealed because the tribal court was never notified.

“I shudder to think about how many cases over the last 40 years of ICWA should have been ICWA but no one provided notice to a tribe or raised the issue,” she said. “In those cases, the child’s connection to their tribe and culture may be lost.”

While there have been a few high-profile cases in which a foster or adoptive family lost a child due to ICWA, she said there are many more cases people don’t hear about in which a child has stayed with a non-Native family because a bond exists. One of the main provisions in ICWA, she said, is to work toward the child’s best interests .

“Certainly in any jurisdiction, you can find a horror story,” she said.

Arizona joined 18 other states in supporting ICWA last month, when Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a legal brief saying the law helps protect “the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes.”

Laws like ICWA — coupled with increased and improved support to tribes — are essential, said David Simmons, director of government affairs and advocacy for the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

“We’re making progress now,” he said, “and this is not the time to abandon what does work.”

“Sense of identity”

For Molina, returning to the reservation wasn’t something he desired as a child.

He’d first left when he was 5, and says most of what he could remember was painful. It took time, and growing older, for Molina to meet more teens and adults from his tribe. Moreno was his key link.

“It felt cool, having this sense of identity, that I’m Yaqui and this is what we do,” he said. “It was always there, it was always in there.

“It’s proudness, I suppose.”