BCBSM Foundation Helps Lighthouse Hire Full-Time Counselor to Address ‘Hidden Population’ of Oakland County Runaway Youth, Youth Experiencing Homelessness
Jake Newby
| 5 min read
We don’t usually think of children or teenagers when we consider the term “homelessness.” But in Michigan and the Oakland County area specifically, the risk for runaway and youth experiencing homelessness is significant. That’s why Lighthouse devotes as many resources as possible to combat that issue in its communities.
“Youth experiencing homelessness are often kind of a hidden population,” said Lighthouse Director of Youth Programs Michael Centi. “When someone says ‘homeless,’ you don’t picture that 16-year-old who ran away from home or the 22-year-old who is kind of bouncing around place to place. Youth often are very resistant for services, so we need to make sure we are providing very safe and secure and inviting environments for youth to access.”
Lighthouse estimates that about 95 youths a year under the age of 18 enter its doors for its Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) programs. These include a 24-hour residential care facility and a longer-term support program for children aged 16 and 17 to help resolve housing crises. A key service youth have received while under Lighthouse’s roof is counseling from a part-time licensed counselor.
The nonprofit organization will soon benefit from a full-time in-house licensed counselor, a hire Lighthouse will make official this summer after a two-year, $39,500 Community Health Matching grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Foundation in 2024. The hire will allow for more intake, more capacity across the entire Lighthouse staff, and better overall care for the growing number of youth experiencing homelessness Lighthouse serves.
“We were falling a little bit short in our staffing balance,” Centi said. “So, the BCBSM Foundation came in and provided the support needed to elevate a part-time position to a full-time position. And that’s been critical. We serve about 150 youth a year throughout all our RHY programs, and that’s way too much for one person, that’s way too much for one and half people, and that’s a lot for two people. But we continue to expand capacity as well. So, the Foundation has been a key partner in that.”
“One of our top priorities every year is addressing the health of children,” said Audrey Harvey, executive director and chief executive officer of the BCBSM Foundation. “It’s critical to support organizations like Lighthouse that provide homelessness prevention, emergency shelter and so many other crucial services that can change lives for the better here in Michigan.”
A real-life example of the power Lighthouse’s youth counseling, behavioral health services
Counseling is critical for so many situations, especially as it pertains to Lighthouse and the organization’s overarching mission.
“The counselors within our programs often operate also like a case manager,” Centi said. “They’re helping to dive into and kind of problem-solve some pretty intense situations. It’s beyond just that hour, one-on-one, counseling session; the counselor really becomes a deep problem solver in this work.”
One such situation that required complex problem solving and delicate care occurred recently.
“Unfortunately, many youth that we work with have experienced some kind of trafficking,” he said. “We had a young person come to us after she had run away from her home in Muskegon, had met with someone she met with the internet and that person took her to Cleveland, Ohio.
“On the way, somehow … she got away from that situation,” Centi continued. “She took a bus back to Detroit, made it to Detroit, and thankfully law enforcement was able to identify her and bring her to us.”
From there, Lighthouse spent time getting in touch with the girl’s mother and making plans for her mother to travel from Muskegon to Oakland County. Lighthouse facilitated her transportation and a hotel room for the night once her mom arrived.
“We provided some resources and were able to stay in touch with that family to really resolve that acute situation so they could get back home. And she’s still safely there. And you know, while that young person was here, she was working on avoiding these types of situations and processing what had happened with a counselor. So, that counselor played so many roles within that very complex situation to get that young person back home to her family, which was really the best outcome we could ask for.”
The hope for Lighthouse now is that positive outcomes like these will occur more often with a full-time counselor aboard.
“This funding is really supporting us to offer competitive wages to a good counselor,” Centi said. “It’s supporting us in having the appropriate amount of staff on board to manage some pretty difficult situations. I, personally, get a lot of joy out of this work. As cliché as this sounds, young people are our future. Putting the amount of time and investment into their future and healthy development is absolutely critical and extremely rewarding.”
Check out the BCBSM Foundation website to learn more about the Community Health Matching Grant Program, including eligibility, proposal requirements, and other information.
More from the Foundation:
- Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative Teams with BCBSM Foundation to Improve Colorectal Cancer Surgery Outcomes Statewide
- BCBSM Foundation awards $116,000 to Michigan Organizations Promoting Child Wellbeing and Preventing Abuse and Neglect Before it Happens
- Port Huron Odyssey House Expands Substance Use Treatment Services for Pregnant and Postpartum Women with Help from the BCBSM Foundation
Photo credit: Lighthouse
