MENTORING

“Every child needs a caring adult. That’s the motto,” Vandervoort said. “We are trying to match at-risk youth with a caring, adult mentor.”

The judge hopes to draw volunteer mentors not only from Lancaster but throughout Fairfield County, from Pickerington and Millersport on the northern edge to Amanda and Bremen on the southern. Approved mentors will be required to take an online training course and then spend at least one hour per week mentoring youth either one-on-one, in small groups or in activities such as hiking, running, gardening, fishing, gaming or scrap-booking.

The idea is to encourage and support juveniles on probation through teaching and modeling life skills and promoting involvement in social activities and new life experiences. Many of the youth who come through her courtroom are from families affected by drug addiction and other dysfunction, and some lack in their lives a caring, responsible adult, Vandervoort said.

The Department of Youth Services helps fund a number of mentoring programs in juvenile courts around Ohio, including two in Franklin County, spokeswoman Kim Jump said.

Judge David Hejmanowski of Delaware County Juvenile Court champions mentoring. His court’s programs, MOMS (Mothers Offering Mentoring Support), which connects adult mothers with teenage mothers, and TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More), which pairs at-risk youths aged 10 to 14 with Ohio Wesleyan University mentors, are open to young people both in the court system and outside it.

Mentoring is preventative medicine, Hejmanowski said.

“I always say to the new judges, ‘The goal of every juvenile court judge should be to put ourselves out of business.’ Mentoring is the legal equivalent of preventative medicine,” he said. “We are trying to provide support and direction so kids don’t become involved in the court system or if they are, we don’t see them back again.”

Fairfield County currently has about 1,100 young people in the juvenile court system. The state grant is intended to divert youths from going to juvenile jail. At least 70 youth on probation are expected to participate each year in the community mentoring program that Vandervoort is designing with Sheila Perry, the mentor coordinator.

The volunteers recruited to the expanded mentoring program will join a small, but dedicated corps of men and women who have been working with juveniles on probation for the last couple of years in group mentoring sessions held after school.

“We try to be that safe space for them, to help give them advice and to help them navigate what they’re going through,” said Johnny Friesen, youth pastor at Lancaster Vineyard Church, who with Scott Spangler, community impact director at United Way of Fairfield County, volunteers to mentor teenage boys in a group setting.

Besides discussing what’s going on in school and at home with Spangler, 30, and Friesen, 31, the boys ask their mentors questions. On Thursday, they were asked whether they had done drugs. No, the men replied.

Sarah Bay, 31, who works as a nanny in Canal Winchester and volunteers with young people at Lancaster Vineyard Church, and Denise Rooker, a 55-year-old Lancaster High School teacher, also are used to being questioned by the girls they have mentored. It can take a little time.

“When they’re able to build trust, they are more open, more comfortable, and then they can begin receiving direction,” Bay said.

The volunteers are excited about the plans to expand the mentoring program. The expansion will allow for more one-on-one mentoring, they said, and also may draw professionals specializing in cooking, car care and other fields who could help young people navigate career choices.