Streets That Speak - Hip social worker helps kids

Hip social worker helps kids
South Bend Tribune, IN
TERRI FINCH HAMILTON
The Grand Rapids Press

Lenair Correll, a social worker for the DA Blodgett for Children is shown in Grand Rapids. Correll works with delinquent teens who are in foster care to help them get ready to live on their own at age 18.
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AP Photo/ LORI NIEDENFUER COOL

WAYLAND, Mich. (AP) -- Lenair Correll hops out of her silver convertible and flip-flops into a Wayland foster home in her woven straw sandals.

Inside, two teen boys who have seen a lot of trouble will have their weekly chat with their hip social worker with the pierced nose.

One wants to go visit his mom out of state. Sorry, the courts won't allow it, Correll tells him.

"That pisses me off," he says, his fingers drumming on the lace tablecloth in agitation. "That's bull crap."

"It's all on you," she tells him. "You need to make some better decisions."

The two of them have gotten off to a rocky start. Correll knows the drill. It'll be this way for a while.

Soon, chances are, he'll wonder what he ever did without her.

Correll, 34, specializes in helping tough teen boys in foster care. When she gets them, they're often mouthy, disrespectful, troubled by mental illness or learning disorders, in trouble with the law.

With a mix of compassion and tough love, she tries to steer them back to the right path.

She takes them to court hearings. She buys them ice cream sandwiches to celebrate successes. And she confiscates their cell phones when they tick her off.

The teens spend a lot of time in her Volkswagen Cabrio convertible, complaining it's too small. Part of her job is taking them to their court dates, which are often all over the state.

During the first car trip with a teen, she asks silly questions -- what's your favorite color? If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it? If you could be anybody, who would you be?

As she gets to know them, the car questions get deeper.

What's your greatest accomplishment? If you had to tell somebody a deep, dark secret, what would it be? Who in the world knows you best?

Sometimes, their answer to that last question throws her.

More than one kid has answered, "You do."

The boys she helps live ...

with foster parents through a program at D.A. Blodgett for Children called the Parent Therapist Program. Designed for teens who need extra support, the program places them with foster parents who have been trained extensively to meet their many needs.

At age 17 or 18, they'll be out on their own, graduates of foster care. Correll's job is to make sure they're ready.

Over the past seven years, she's watched dozens head out into the world, struggling and triumphing, some becoming fathers, some buying houses, others ending up homeless or in jail.

She's had a rough year. Several of her boys have been in trouble with the law, stealing cars and breaking into a house.

"I've taken a beating this year," Correll says. "It's been so frustrating. They know right from wrong. They know they shouldn't steal a car. They have this attitude, 'Everybody thinks I'm a loser, so I must be a loser. So I'll do loser things.'

"One kid from last year I had really high hopes for," she says. "He went to prison."

She holds up a letter from him, several pages long, she just found in her mailbox. She hasn't read it yet. It's just one of several letters that have stuffed her mailbox lately as the teen struggles behind bars.

"It's gut-wrenching to get these letters," Correll says. She always writes back. She tells him to be good, be strong. She always includes an inspirational quote, culled from her stash of quote books.

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body," is one of her favorites. "I love the power of words," she says.

Her own power lies in her mix of tell-it-like-it-is frankness and compassion that leads her above and beyond the call of social worker duty, says Correll's supervisor, Mary Jo Sabaitis.

She's put utilities in her name for 17-year-olds on their own who can't get them. She's used her own money to buy bipolar medication for a teen in jail. She takes teens shopping for clothes when they're out in the world, floundering.

"This is for kids who are no longer on her caseload," says Lona Clairmont, a D.A. Blodgett foster mother for 20 years who has worked with Correll for seven.

"It's no longer her job. It's humanity."

Some of the things Correll does make her boss wince.

"She teaches them how to drive in her car on country roads," Sabaitis says. "Aaaaagggh! It's not something we'd promote."

Correll insists her children take the SAT.

"If they say, 'I don't feel like it,' she won't accept that," Sabaitis says. "She'll say, 'Get your butt over here.' Then she'll hold their hand.

"Lenair opens doors for them that no one else would," Sabaitis says. "She shows them what it feels like to get an education. Even if they go for three months then drop out, they've had a glimpse of a life that goes beyond crime, beyond substance abuse, beyond life on the dole."

The other day, Correll got a phone call from Matt Fuller, who graduated from high school -- and her caseload -- two years ago to strike out on his own.

"He said, 'Lenair, I just closed on my first house an hour ago,'æ" she says. "He was so excited. It made me feel good that something good happened to him, and he called me."

Fuller, 21, now a tool-and-die maker, says of course he called Lenair.

"She's like part of my family," he says. "She's always been there.

"When I moved out on my own, she went crazy trying to get me stuff -- a toaster, utensils," he says. "I thought I was just gonna move out with nothing. She's always showing that she cares, always asking if everything is all right."

Not only is Correll there for her boys, they're there for her, too. When she went through a painful breakup a while back, her boys consoled her.

"I do let down my guard sometimes," she says. "They don't just see this person who's working with them. They see a person."