NEW LONDON – He’s a caring native New Londoner, who says he didn’t want to carry on working in education.
But one year on and Dominique Griffin, the Community Navigator for the city’s Youth Engagement Partnership (YEP) is helping to turn the lives around of some of the city’s disconnected youth.
“I’d seen the job listing on Indeed. And I was reading through the description and I was like, this might be fake, because I’ve never heard of a program like this. And I’ve worked in education, you know the last 10 years,” Griffin told CT Examiner.
The Child & Family Agency of southeastern Connecticut were on the lookout for someone special, who could help them and their partners establish this program that would help New London youth feel empowered, connected and supported but in a way that was unique to them, rather than the usual one size fits all state program that often overlooks individuality.
Griffin’s job was to collaboratively create an innovative safety net for each individual based on their likes, but also providing family-based interventions to help keep each young person engaged and provide them with vocational support and life skills from real life mentors out in the community who would also help to hold them accountable.
“I’m on the front lines, I’m in the schools,” said Griffin. “We get referrals from New London public schools, middle and high school students only.”
The program is looking for those young people who are skipping school, getting suspended or expelled and turning them and their behavior around.
“The main bulk of our referrals come from like school counselors, social workers, psychologists. We even get referrals from juvenile probation and the juvenile Review Board,” said Griffin.
Once Griffin gets a referral, he said he always sets up and interview with the parent or guardian first.
“I like to meet with the parents first because I can kind of like get a real background of what’s going on with the kid. And sometimes kids don’t want to meet with their parent or guardian because, (he laughs) you know how it goes.”
Despite Griffin’s charisma and love for what he is doing, he admitted it’s all about relationship building and that’s different from person to person.
“I connect with them as often as possible, so I’ll try to check in with each kid once a week. I’ll try to set up a meeting at the end of our meeting all of the time because, you know, it’s crucial to build that rapport. So, sometimes it might take three to six months to build a rapport and get a kid to hear you out and really engage and trust you a bit,” said Griffin.
The program provides Griffin with an unlimited platform to go out and find mentors and partners in the immediate and wider communities who will take a young person under their wing for an hour or two each week and provide them with work experience, life skills and guidance.
Two of the programs biggest supporters are the Garde Arts Center and a local media production company called Reel E Media.
Between them, they provide multiple creative outlets for the young people on the program, while offering hands-on experience in video production and live-action theatre.
“We just wrapped up our third gaming day tournament at the Garde Arts Center,” says Griffin, “I promote it to the kids, Hey, you know, we’re having a video game tournament. And that’s just a part of the whole engagement piece. You know, this era and generation of kids they’ve been raised with tablets and iPhones, so it’s like, what can we do to get them to come together and engage with each other.”
The program has been running for not quite a year and was funded by the City of New London and $300,000 of federal ARPA money the city received.
Jeanne Milstein, the Director of Human Services for the city, said it became clear to her and Mayor Michael Passero during the Covid-19 pandemic how isolated some of the city’s kids had become.
“It was resulting in some serious mental health issues among our young people, but also kids having a tough time adjusting, going back to school with interpersonal relationships,” said Milstein.
The 119K Commission was looking at disconnected youth across the state, and Milstein and Passero decided to launch a project in New London.
“I felt it was really important taking part in that statewide initiative to study solutions and the problem of disconnected youth. I really felt like the team I have here in New London, especially our partners, we were in a position to really be impactful. We’re a small microcosm here in the city of New London, and we’ve always felt that we could identify our youths that are at risk,” Passero told CT Examiner.
Milstein said the program was based on the success they’ve had in the city with the opioid navigator initiative, helping people cope with addiction issues. She said they were evaluating the success of YEP with a professor from Connecticut College to help track results of the program, but anecdotally they could see the success of what they are doing.
“The kids who, were not going to school, some are going back a couple days a week, some are now assigned mentors,” said Milstein. “More and more kids are showing up for like Gaming Day and willing to talk to Dom.”
And Milstein said they’ve had no end of people coming forward wanting to be mentors as well.
“Some kids really want to learn business. So, we have barbers and a woman who owns her own nail salon, even real estate agents.”
Passero told CT Examiner he believed their first obligation was to provide a safety net and make sure that not one of New London’s children falls through it.
“We want everybody in the city to have a fair shot at well being. And that starts with our youth. That starts with making sure that we don’t lose them during that critical time between adolescents and early adulthood into your early twenties,” said Passero. “That’s when we lose somebody. That’s the equivalent of the golden hour and we’re determined to not lose any more children during that period.”