Not just for the kids: Youth advocate looks to support families too

For some, the job title “youth advocate” may imply that the position would only provide resources and support to children. But for Deloris Joseph, who became Dartmouth’s youth advocate in 2020, the job often extends past the kids to their families.

Joseph said that young people are “attached to adults” and noted that sometimes parents also need support to be there for the young people in their lives.

“Sometimes it’s not just the child, it’s the families too,” she said.

This can include anything from parents and guardians having issues with basic needs, facing food insecurity or paying for utilities, she said.

The youth advocate position was created around 60 years ago and recently evolved into what Joseph called a “community service agency.”

Joseph provides referrals, connects people to services and provides some short-term case management but no one-on-one therapy as youth advocate is not a therapeutic position.

She emphasized that as a town employee, she works for every child who lives in Dartmouth, whether they attend Dartmouth Public Schools, Bishop Stang, or an out-of-town school.

Joseph noted that she only reaches out to parents and families when she has their permission to do so and that she never makes cold calls because the programs and resources she offers are all voluntary.

“A family can reach out one day and say, ‘I need support,’ but if they don’t want it [anymore], I’m not going to continuously call them,” she said.

In her six years as youth advocate, the needs of kids have remained relatively consistent, focused on mental health, food insecurity and housing instability.

Joseph said that the need for mental health care has “always been there” but added that she feels like it’s “gotten more pronounced since Covid.”

She noted that while the need for mental health care has increased, the number of available providers hasn’t.

Joseph said she has to tell families that they might not be able to see someone right away. In the case of an emergency or a crisis situation, she will direct them to the crisis center in New Bedford.

With the price of food increasing, it’s become difficult for people to go grocery shopping while also having enough money to pay for other needs, she said.

“Even though people don’t want to believe that it happens here, there’s a lot of food insecurity here in Dartmouth,” Joseph said.

Joseph also works with families that need housing support and said she “probably gets a couple of calls a month,” whether it’s because someone is going to be evicted, is losing housing or needs emergency housing, which she said “kind of does not exist anymore.”

She said she is “very upfront” with people about housing options and tries to get them to look at alternatives, whether it’s temporarily moving in with family or moving out of Dartmouth if they can no longer afford the cost of living.

“I said, ‘Finding housing right away may not be in the cards for you right now, and that’s not just you,’” she said. “That is one of the saddest conversations I have to have with people about housing, but I don’t control that.”

Joseph is also behind many town initiatives for kids, including the annual Fill the Bus toy drive, School on Wheels and getting support for kids so they can attend summer camp.

Most recently, Joseph initiated a program that offered kids free bagged lunches over spring break, supplying 150 lunches that kids could pick up at the Southworth and North Branch libraries, or at school before break if kids knew they wouldn’t be able to get to the libraries.

She is now looking toward creating more group work like Lean in Girls for middle school girls and a peer mentorship program where older kids would be taught how to talk with and mentor younger kids.

“Sometimes it’s a lot easier for young people to talk to other young people,” Joseph said.

She noted that in this program, adults would be in the background, and if a kid tells their peer mentor something, it would “move up the chain” to get kids the help they need.

“I wish there was something like that when I was growing up,” Joseph said.