Building Community Safe After-School Places A Necessity

“It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?”

That familiar question has been around for awhile. It’s an appropriate reminder to parents of their responsibility for the guidance and supervision of their youngsters.

What if we shift the time frame a few hours?

“It’s 4 p.m. Do you know where your children are?

It’s one thing for parents to be aware of what their kids are up to late at night, when the parents are presumably home and able to do something about it if necessary.

But between the time school lets out and the time working parents get home, the hours are so filled with temptations and opportunities for unwise choices that experts identify them as a special concern.

Safe places for structured activities is one of the five resources that last spring’s Presidents’ Summit on America’s Future listed as critical for helping children avoid a host of problems, including drugs, teen pregnancy and other pitfalls that can trip up even the best of kids with too much idle time to kill.

Fortunately, Spokane has a growing list of safe places for structured activities, the newest being the Campus Life Center in the East Central Neighborhood. Nearby, the Libby Teen Center is operating in a former middle school and a variety of programs are located at various neighborhood centers.

As the Campus Life Center demonstrates, there is a part for all sectors of the community to play in meeting a need as important as helping kids become stable, productive adults.

Certainly government has a role, but that role has limits. The faith community (such as Spokane Youth for Christ, which runs the Campus Life Center), the private nonprofit sector, individual citizens, businesses - all of us have roles, working together as a community.

The fact that Whitworth College’s work study program is providing seven of the center’s staff members shows the extra advantages of drawing on a collaborative network of the region’s many resources.

It’s impossible to point to specific youngsters who walk through the doors of the Campus Life Center - or the Libby Teen Center, or any of the other after-school programs in the area - and say which one would otherwise be experimenting with drugs this afternoon or which ones would be giving their adolescent hormones free rein on the family room couch.

That’s the nature of prevention strategies. Their success doesn’t show up in easily trackable measurements. It shows up in statistics and in a healthier, safer and more enriched community.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = EDITORIAL, COLUMN, SERIES - Our View CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board