Youth Continuum’s Closure Mourned

by Laura Glesby

When Shakaya Kitchens drove by Potter Road in North Haven this weekend, she noticed that the group home where she used to work had been shuttered.

It was one more reminder of news that she couldn’t stop thinking about: that Youth Continuum — the organization that helped her get on her feet as a teen mom, that for a time also became her employer — will soon be shutting down for good.

“It’s really, really impacting me. I think about it every day,” Kitchens said. “I’m just devastated.”

Over the course of nearly 60 years, Youth Continuum has provided an array of housing and social services for teens and young adults, including emergency shelter, transitional housing, group home programs, a drop-in center, and domestic violence and human trafficking support. The organization became an affiliate of Clifford Beers Community Health Care in 2021. It underwent three rounds of leadership turnover within the last three years. Now, after two consecutive years of financial deficits, the organization is slated to close.

According to Interim Executive Director Yari Ijeh, Youth Continuum has a plan in place for every currently enrolled client. Mayor Justin Elicker echoed in a statement that the city is coordinating with Youth Continuum and other organizations to “ensure that all of the 61 youth and young adults who are currently in Youth Continuum’s care are provided with uninterrupted services and remain in safe, supportive housing.”

But the loss of the institution itself will leave an important gap in the resources available to New Haven youth, according to several people who once received support from the organization.

Youth Continuum has played a unique role within New Haven’s network of social services due to its focus on older teens and young adults experiencing instability at a critical developmental time in their lives. Many factors contributing to youth homelessness are unique to the age group; over the years, the organization’s clients have included young adults with nowhere to go after aging out of foster care, kids kicked out of their family’s homes after coming out as LGBTQIA+, and teens who became parents before having the chance to learn the ropes of adulthood.

According to Elicker, the city and state are searching for “alternative options and nonprofit organizations that can step in to assume operations of the youth homelessness services currently being offered by Youth Continuum.” Elicker wrote in a statement that “[t]he state has issued an RFP, and we look forward to this process moving forward as expeditiously as possible. Everyone is acting with urgency.”

Meanwhile, he wrote that while the city had allocated $500,000 to support Youth Continuum’s efforts to build a new shelter space and community hub on Grand Avenue, now that the project is no longer underway, that funding will likely be shifted toward other initiatives within the city’s Department of Community Resilience.

“I Know Where Our Minds Can Go When We’re Left Feeling Loveless”

On Friday, Kitchens reacted to an article about Youth Continuum’s closure on Facebook: “Wow, this place gave me and my daughter our first home.”

About two decades ago, Kitchens became a mom at the age of 18. She soon found herself parenting a toddler while juggling classes at Gateway Community College. She was in need of a place to live, and Gateway informed her about Youth Continuum.

“I rode a bike in the rain” to get to the shelter, she recalled during an interview with the Independent. After completing the intake process, the organization found room for her in one of its West Haven housing programs. The West Haven location was quiet compared to her previous neighborhood, where violence had taken a toll on her mental health. The Youth Continuum home felt “calm and peaceful,” she said. “I felt safe.”

“My caseworker, she was like another parent-slash-sister,” said Kitchens. The caseworker would give her honest advice from a place of love: feedback on her parenting, resources on how to budget. Youth Continuum, as Kitchen recalls it, was a critical motivating force in her life. She was determined never to lose the newfound sense of independence and stability she felt there.

Much has changed in Kitchens’ life since then. Her daughter is a recent New Haven Academy high school graduate, and Kitchens herself has a master’s degree in education.

A few years ago, Kitchens found work at the Youth Continuum group home on Potter Road, known as Helen’s House. Her boss there became yet another mentor. “She trusted me,” Kitchens recalled — which helped Kitchens learn to further trust herself.

Now, Kitchens teaches third grade at Highville Charter School in Science Park, while working on the weekends at a school for autistic children. Her former supervisor at Youth Continuum donated to help her supply her Highville classroom, Kitchens said.

Kitchens filled the classroom with bright colors and motivational quotes, designed to pass on a sense of trust and safety to the students she now teaches.

Kitchens isn’t the only former Youth Continuum client who found a job opportunity at the organization.

Shamica Frasier’s path to Youth Continuum also started when she realized she was going to be a teen parent, over 15 years ago. “You hear your child has a baby early, you’re not too excited about that as a parent,” she recalled in a separate interview withe Independent. “I started to need a place to stay.”

Frasier started “bouncing house to house” at around 17 years old. She recalled walking into businesses downtown, asking for job applications, as she neared the end of her pregnancy. Managers would tell her they didn’t want to hire an employee who would soon be taking time off to have a kid.

Eventually, Frasier recalled hearing about Youth Continuum from a friend. Most of the available shelters at the time allowed shorter-term stays of three to six months, but Youth Continuum offered a housing program that provided clients with a home for up to two years.

Frasier ended up on the waitlist for that program; she and her baby stayed at a different shelter in the meantime. But while the Youth Continuum staff couldn’t offer her immediate housing, they decided to find her a job at the organization itself. She became a temporary secretary at Youth Continuum. One of her responsibilities was to print out job listings and arrange them on a giant job board at the Youth Continuum office. Every time she’d post a new job opportunity, she’d apply for the position herself.

Meanwhile, she participated in a job coaching program at the organization. On Wednesdays and Fridays, as Frasier recalled it, she would join a cohort of young adults in a Youth Continuum car to drive around for job interviews. “We would dress really professionally,” with help from the organization in procuring workplace clothes, and “we would cheer each other on every time we spoke to a manager,” Frasier remembered. “When i think of Youth Continuum, those are the beautiful memories that come to my mind.” She eventually landed a job at the Milford mall.

Throughout this time, Frasier was raising a kid. The knowledge that she had to meet her son’s needs became her intense focus. It could be lonely at times, she said. The message she received from Youth Continuum was that she wasn’t alone.

She said that Youth Continuum “began to change my life” not only through the concrete resources it provided, but through “the words that were spoken there.” Each time, for instance, a staff member noticed she was having a hard day and said “hey, come sit down beside me.” From peers and mentors, she began to internalize that “I was capable. I was worth more.” She heard the hidden message in what they told her: “If you’re gonna fight, I’m gonna fight alongside you.”

“I will never forget those moments of being able to get to go out to those job interviews,” said Frasier. “If you didn’t have clothes, they were willing to go to, say, Goodwill, help you shop and get something nice. People may think it’s a small thing. It’s huge. You’re giving the youth a chance after so many doors have already closed.”

Now, Frasier is 33. She bought her own house two years ago. Her son — now the oldest of three — is 16, the “sweetest kid you’ll ever meet,” enrolled in an honors program. She’s a birth and post-partum doula through her practice, New Birth Journey. On a community-wide level, Frasier is an advocate for reducing racial disparities in maternal health care and increasing access to reproductive health and education overall. This Saturday, she’s helping to throw the fourth annual Community Baby Shower at the Q House, connecting new and expecting parents with necessary supplies, health care, and support. She’s built a life of helping new parents through the daunting experience she first navigated as a teenager on her own.

Both Kitchens and Frasier expressed concern about the gap in services that Youth Continuum will leave behind in the city.

“It scares me, what’s happen to our youth,” said Kitchens.

“We’ve been losing a lot of young folk” to violence, said Frasier. “A lot of them are heartbroken,” or struggling with family dynamics, or lacking the tools to emotionally regulate. “I was a young person. I know where our minds can go when we’re left feeling loveless.”

To both of them, Youth Continuum represented a model that the city should be trying to replicate — a place specifically for vulnerable young people that aims to meet not only their physical needs but their emotional ones.