'Mashpee Cares' To Take On Variety Of Youth Issues

By: Michael C. Bailey
Published: 02/11/11

The Mashpee Cares initiative moved forward last week, and there are tentative plans for the organization to seek out grant funding in support of its mission to address the many challenges facing Mashpee youth.

More than two dozen parents, school officials, and representatives of local community and human service organizations attended last Thursday’s Mashpee Cares meeting, which first hashed out some of the next steps for the townwide youth wellness project.

Derek Thompson, the Quashnet School’s assistant principal and former assistant principal of Plymouth North High School, shared his experiences with a similar project from his time in the latter position: the Plymouth Youth Development Collaborative. “That group was made possible by a grant we got,” he said.

During its early days the collaborative engaged in efforts similar to what is envisioned for Mashpee Cares, “and we did a lot of good things but we kind of hit a wall, and we got to a point when we were kind of thinking, you know, what’s next?” Mr. Thompson said. “And so we started doing some research and we found a grant called the ‘Drug-Free Communities Grant.’ ”

Mr. Thompson said that grant helped the Plymouth group better focus and plan its efforts, while also allowing for maximum community involvement.

In preparing to apply for a grant, the Mashpee group would need to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the issues facing Mashpee children, and as an added benefit, Mr. Thompson said, Mashpee Cares could then base its specific projects on solid, detailed data “instead of just taking scattered approaches” to addressing the problems based on community opinion.

“We can all sit around and look at Mashpee and we have a pretty good grasp on what we believe the problems are,” Mr. Thompson said, “but in order to move forward with this grant, we would need to put together a group that would really look at data, and we would probably start by putting together a survey.”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris eget metus nisi. Cras congue interdum nunc non adipiscing. Vivamus molestie tortor eu metus eleifend ac tempus mi pretium.

According to Beverly Costa-Ciavola, director of the Cape Cod Neighborhood Support Coalition, “The process itself is well worthwhile going through” because of the survey requirement. “I believe it tells you more about the community that you thought you knew about and really don’t.”

According to Mr. Thompson, the Plymouth schools conduct the extensive “Communities That Cares” survey among all students in grade 6 and up, which asks students about alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use, and antisocial behaviors (fighting, bullying, et cetera).

It also measures “protective factors,” such as strong family ties, opportunities for positive social interactions, and general social skills; and risk factors such as availability of substances, history of family conflict or antisocial behavior, parental attitudes toward harmful behavior, and the prevalence of similar behavior among peers.

Ann M. Bradshaw, superintendent of schools and the person who conceived of the Mashpee Cares initiative, said members of the group “will meet offline to study and make recommendations on an assessment to use,” such as the state Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted every other year by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Problems Start Early
The Mashpee School Department has not conducted any recent risk assessment surveys among its students. The last such survey by the DESE was conducted in 2009, but the results of that survey have not yet been released.

Data in the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicated that certain behaviors have decreased over the past decade, but remain a major issue for many schools. Among the key findings from the 2007 report:

• 73 percent of high school students reported that they had at some point in their lives consumed alcohol, and 34 percent of middle school-age students said they had tried alcohol;

• 46 percent of high school students and 17 percent of middle school students said they had within the 30-day period preceding the survey consumed alcohol;

• 20 percent of high school students said they first drank alcohol before age 13, and 16 percent of middle school students said they had tried alcohol as young as 8 years old;

• 41 percent of high school students said they had at some point tried marijuana, 9 percent said they had tried cocaine, 4 percent said they had tried methamphetamines;

• On average, 14 percent of high school and middle school students admitted that they had initiated bullying involving physical violence

• 22 percent of high school students reported being a target of bullying, and 5 percent said they had deliberately skipped school to avoid their tormentors

• 13 percent of high school students said they had contemplated committing suicide within the year preceding the survey, 11 percent made an actual suicide plan, and 8 percent followed through with a suicide attempt

• About 5 percent of middle school students admitted to attempting suicide

Although there is no Mashpee specific-data available, several attendees of last week’s meeting said they knew firsthand that local youth were engaging in risky behavior, often at startlingly young ages.

“Middle school parents don’t think their kids are drinking and doing things they shouldn’t be doing,” Mr. Thompson said, but a study conducted among Plymouth middle school students found that 70 percent of those students have been exposed to drinking.

“I think we should start in the 4th grade, frankly,” Ruth W. Provost, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Cape Cod, said about the proposed local survey. She said that through the club’s SMART (Skills Mastery and Resistance Training) Moves alcohol and drug awareness and prevention program, she has heard from children in elementary school who claimed to have experience with drinking.

More than 100 club members participated in the SMART Moves program last year, Ms. Provost said.

Parental Influence Matters
Mr. Thompson said that as the Plymouth project came together, school officials learned that many parents effectively permitted their children’s actions through their inattention or indifference, and in some cases directly contributed to their children’s behavior.

“We realized when we started collecting data in Plymouth, that the perception of harm by parents—there was a huge disconnect,” he said. “A lot of parents thought it was okay for kids to be drinking, or it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“There is an ambivalence, I think, among a lot of parents about alcohol,” Raymond V. Tamasi, president and CEO of Gosnold on Cape Cod, said, adding that “the involvement of parents is critical around this age” to help children make sound decisions.

“Parental disapproval of a child’s behavior is still one of the most significant influences on a child,” he said, adding that addictive behavior tends to run in families. “I’m beginning to see the grandchildren now” of past clients of the substance abuse treatment center, he said.

Plymouth addressed the issue of parental enablement by requiring parents of prom-bound students to attend a “social host liability night” organized through the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office, at which an attorney explained to parents the possible repercussions of allowing underage drinking in the home.

Officer Clifford T. Harris of the Falmouth Police Department, who is also president of Mashpee Pop Warner Football, said Michael D. O’Keefe, the Cape and Islands’ district attorney, has a zero-tolerance policy for parents who host parties where underage guests are found consuming alcohol.

Last year Mashpee police responded to a handful of house parties at which teens were found drinking alcohol. In April police broke up a party at a sand pit off Great Hay Road, at which they discovered between 50 and 60 teens and evidence of alcohol use.

Mashpee High School in 2003 instituted harsher penalties for student athletes caught using alcohol that beefed up suspensions from active play and stripped captains of their titles. The new policy, which was later expanded to include students involved in other co-curricular activities, was crafted after pictures of several students drinking at a house party were posted on a website. A local homeowner and 17 students were identified in those pictures.

Mr. Tamasi warned that changing attitudes about alcohol use would happen “incrementally,” and would require more than educating children and adults about the legalities of drinking.

“Prevention is not going to occur because you educate your kids about drugs and alcohol,” he said. “Prevention is not going to occur because there are very rigorous legal restrictions placed upon something…it’s really a combination of efforts that involve the whole community, and it’s a long process.”

Ms. Bradshaw said a subcommittee focusing on substance abuse issues is considering a formal plan to direct Mashpee children to available after-school programs.

Youth Suicide Increases
The pressures modern children face play into an area of increased concern on the Cape, that of youth suicide.

According to statistics provided by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, Cape Cod’s youth suicide rate is 1.5 times that of the state rate of 7.2 deaths by suicide per 100,000 members of the population (based on 1999 to 2005 data).

According to Maura R. Weir, project manager of the Cape & Islands Youth Suicide Prevention Project, there were 23 recorded youth suicides between 1999 and 2007. In 2008 and 2009 there were 17. “We have a really big problem here at the moment,” she said, “and they’re not really slowing down.”

Nationally, suicide rates among 15- to 24-year-olds have tripled since 1952, the 15 to 19 age group has the highest suicide attempt rate, and the 18 to 24 age group has more suicide completions.

Ms. Weir noted that suicide attempts often go hand-in-hand with alcohol or drug use. “A lot of the deaths by suicide are by people who are not really intoxicated, but just have enough to get their gumption up to do it,” she said.

There have been no recorded youth suicides in Mashpee for more than 15 years.

Gangs Not An Issue
Although the issue of gang violence and involvement is listed as among Mashpee Cares’ priority topics, Mashpee itself has yet to experience any verified gang activity—at least on a par with what has been witnessed in other communities.

“I don’t believe there are any organized gangs engaged in violence in Mashpee,” Rodney C. Collins, chief of the Mashpee Police Department, said. “Do I believe, however, there are groups of kids who hang out together and engage in criminal behavior that pretend to be gangs? Yes.”

Chief Collins clarified that “gang activity” in town has been limited to small groups of younger people committing acts of petty vandalism—which he called “a far cry” from the more common perception of a violent street gang active in the drug trade, “which is more prevalent in urban areas.”

“They’re more of a nuisance than anything else,” the chief said of the Mashpee gangs. “They certainly aren’t a threat to public safety.”

However James M. Cummings, Barnstable County sheriff, said some Cape communities do indeed have a more serious gang presence. During a January interview with the Enterprise, Sheriff Cummings said the Barnstable County Correctional Facility has seen inmates recently who have identified themselves as gang members.

“We’re seeing people who are Bloods and Crips,” he said, referring to the infamous rival gangs that originated in Los Angeles in the 1970s. “There’s dozens and dozens and dozens of inmates who have come through here who are associated with different gangs…we’re aware now that there is gang activity and there’s people who are coming in here who are telling us they’re members of these gangs.”