O, Brother, Where Art Thou?

West Ashley resident Bradley Adams didn’t know all the history that lead up to Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) closing down. All Adams knew was that he wanted to give back and that was going to be harder moving forward.
Last week, Adams and close to 100 “Bigs” throughout the Charleston area received an email without anything in the subject line. It stated that due to massive budgetary shortfalls BBBS of Carolina Youth Development Center (CYDC) was being shuttered after decades of service and thousands of lives brightened.
The email, which the Bigs were not meant to receive at that time, went on to read: “Each match will be contacted and closed out by a match specialist … As policy states, we recommend that a match end after it is closed and for there to be no further contact between the Big and Little”. Twelve minutes later a “recall” email went out, but it was too late. Hundreds of Bigs were already left confused and heartbroken after hearing they were to have no further contact with their matches, some of whom had worked with their Little for moths or even years.
For the past year and a half, Adams, who runs a West Ashley insurance agency with his father, has been welcoming a young boy from North Charleston into his house just about every week.
“Sometimes he just wants to hang out and watch SpongeBob, other times we go to a RiverDogs game,” says Adams who himself was adopted and sees being a mentor as a way of giving back. He tries to keep plans as open and as fluid as he can when his Little comes over, “just like I do with my own daughter.”
BBBS pairs adult mentors with children who are facing adversity, attempting to provide strong and enduring relationships that change lives for the better. BBBS is administered by CYDC, located in North Charleston, which serves vulnerable children in the community, whether at its Lackawanna Boulevard residential facility or through its various community programs.
Kids living at the facility or receiving its services may be at-risk for a host of reasons; some have been removed by the state from abusive or neglectful homes and situations.
According to the email, three years ago the funding for the BBBS program dropped from $80,000 to roughly $20,000 annually.
State officials also confirmed this week that CYDC also lost funding for a state family group conferencing program that would end this month.
A national youth advocate organization will take over the program, and state officials said CYDC could apply to that group to carry on that program.
Qaitlin Peterson, who was the manager of the BBBS program, said the funding cuts weren’t all from one donor, as the program and the center receive money from a variety of sources.
Donations, she said, were down since the Great Recession, and the amount of grant money on the table, in general, for needy programs had also shrunk.
“We were working to build the financing back to where it was before the recession,” said Peterson, who has run the BBBS program for the last six months. “Individual donations take time to foster and it’s hard to find that group of people who really care and who can show that kind of devotion.”
State government has had a hard time with social services for the past few years.
Last summer, Lillian Koller, the former head of the state’s Department of Social Services resigned under a firestorm of criticism from state senators that the agency had been mismanaged after statistics inferred that far more children died under state supervision than should have been expected.
Peterson would only say that Koller’s reign was a “stressful time” for those working for not-for-profits dealing with social services. She said that funding had not been shifted from other services CYDC provides to shore-up the mentoring programs. She said that there was already a 200-kid waiting list to get into BBBS.
According to Peterson, the remaining BBBS children would be referred to other mentoring programs, but BBBS mentors have not notified about such changes.
At this time it’s unknown how many Bigs and Littles decided to continue their matches despite the recommendation to end all contact. But if Adams is any indication, it’s likely many matches will continue.
“I’ve already contacted my Little’s mother before the news went public, and said nothing will change with us,” said Adams. “I just wish someone had $100,000 to help keep this going. The community needs it. It’s just more than I have to give.”