Community is key to helping teens living on their own in Bigfork

Marcia Bumke has been disappointed at times, but she’s pushed on.

Each time she hits a bump in the road, another path opens up.

After all, she knows whom she’s working for: the children.

Bumke is one of the leaders of Sparrow’s Nest, an organization that is working to help homeless teens in the Flathead Valley. 

More than 300 children have been identified in the Flathead Valley as homeless, and in Bigfork, there are eight children whom the Office of Public Instruction has identified as officially homeless. Homeless can have several faces: it may be a child living with a friend, or a child living with a member of the community. Or it can be a child living in a car. The state defines the homeless teen as a child living without a legal guardian. 

Bumke has seen personally the extremes of teenage homelessness in the Flathead Valley. 

When Bumke began pulling back the layers of the homeless issue in the Flathead Valley two years ago she encountered a startling example of the problem.

She met a 14-year-old girl who was wandering the woods at night. The girl had moved from the woods, to a portable toilet for shelter, then to a Dumpster. 

School was her safe place. 

“As a community we just have to do better than that,” Bumke said.

And those warm hallways, showers and the opportunity for a meal are sometimes what keep children coming to school when they’re homeless.

Bumke first became aware of the issue of homeless teenagers at Christmas a few years ago when the Flathead High School principal asked her parent organization to donate gift cards for children living in hotel rooms. Soon after, her daughter brought home a friend from school who was homeless. “We were just amazed,” Bumke said.

When teens are not helped by a local church, school or community member, there are few resources available in the Flathead Valley for homeless teens. Bumke is working to change that.

She’s helping develop Sparrow’s Nest, an organization that supports children in crisis. Sparrow’s Nest recently received a donated church in Kalispell that is being renovated into a shelter for homeless teens.

There are currently eight beds for homeless teens available in the Flathead Valley, through Missoula Youth Homes. However, only two of those beds are reserved for teenagers who are not “in the system” of court-appointed protection or foster care.

When those two beds are full, the kids are on their own. The new Sparrow’s Nest home in Kalispell will alleviate some of the strain on homeless teens in the Kalispell school district, Bumke said, and she hopes she could develop homes in the outlying areas of Bigfork, Whitefish and Columbia Falls. She’s modeling the Sparrow’s Nest project after Tumbleweed, a homeless shelter for teens in Billings — the only other city in Montana that has a homeless shelter for homeless youth outside of foster care.

In Bigfork, the number of identified homeless teens in school district this year has gone from seven to eight, while Columbia Falls has dropped from 51 to 25, and Whitefish has gone from 22 to nine. However, those numbers will likely increase as the school year progresses, state officials said.

Hilary Clinton coined the phrase “It takes a village,” and in Bigfork that axiom seems to ring true.

When homeless teenagers are identified in the Bigfork school system, teachers, staff and the community rally together to provide support, Bigfork High School counselor Christina Nadeau said.

There are several ways a child can end up homeless on and their own. It may be a family breakdown, financial challenges where the family needs to move away while the child wants to stay, or the child may be removing themselves from a dangerous drug or alcohol situation, Bumke said.

There are resources available to homeless teenagers but because of privacy issues with minors, they don’t always know about them. That’s why Bumke wants to see crisis counselors in high schools who can “cut through the red tape” and be able to work directly with students and the community resources available. 

Because of Bigfork’s smaller size, counselors and school staff are more able to identify students at risk, Nadeau, the Bigfork High School counselor, said. “For homelessness to not be known by someone in our building would be pretty rare,” Nadeau said. “We really work as a community and gather as a village to provide support for kids who need it.”

Often times a community member or school staff will step in and help, offering shelter, food, transportation and financial assistance to get the child through graduation. 

It often varies how well the child responds to that offer for help.

Nadeau said some children come from such tough backgrounds that they are reluctant of the help being offered. “Some kids have a really hard time with structure and consistency,” she said. “Some kids just flounder, even though everything was in place to help them.” 

Other teenagers welcome help gladly. “They’re treated like family and the family walks with them all the way through their post-secondary education,” Nadeau said. 

Homeless doesn’t always mean living on the streets or in the woods. “We have some awesome, thriving kids who are living with friends,” Nadeau said. “We often don’t think of that as homeless because there’s no turmoil. Homeless isn’t always under negative circumstances.”

Despite the varied response from the children being offered help, Nadeau said each child who is identified as needing help — gets it. 

“I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t think every kid had a chance,” she said.

Joan Grant of Woods Bay is helping with Sparrow’s Nest by being on the board of Sparrow’s Nest and providing office space for Lenis at Christ Church Episcopal in Kalispell, where she is the minister.

Heather Denny, the state coordinator for homeless education, said some students never break the cycle of homelessness.

“Each school year we start fresh. Some students will carry over from year to year because they continue to live in a homeless situation,” she said. “And we often see the same families in and out of homelessness over a period of years.”

Nadeau said the staff at Bigfork schools — both middle and high school — are able to identify children at risk for being homeless. A coach may notice a child who is unable to pay for meals on a sports trip, and will notify Nadeau or one of the other school counselors about a possible issue. There are also local churches, the ACES afterschool program and community members who are watching out for children. “We all work together to find a solution,” Nadeau said. “Our community is very generous in taking care of each other, recognizing that need and doing what we can.”

Bumke tends to get two responses from the community when addressing homeless teens: either she is told she’s misrepresenting the situation, “or they say I can’t believe that’s happening here,” she said. “Once folks find out about it, I’m amazed at how generous they are.”

One of the other responses is direct recognition from personal experience. Cat Lenis is a VISTA volunteer working with Sparrow’s Nest. As a 23-year-old, the youth she’s helping are close to her age. “It’s shocking and upsetting to me because they’re so close in age to me,” Lenis said.

Some people have opened up to her about why they want to help. “They say ‘I was homeless too,’” she said.

Caring for homeless teens is something the community needs to address, Bumke said. There are 2,632 teens identified as homeless in Montana. “We can pay for them now, or pay for them later,” Bumke said. “We need to help them now, rather than wait until they become hopelesss.

“These kids have done everything they can. They go to school because it’s a safe place. They want to be there, and they want to graduate.”

Sometimes she gets frustrated at the pace of their efforts, for one reason, because of the lack of knowledge about their condition. “I’ve been looking around, saying ‘Who’s taking care of these kids?’”

Current number of homeless students in Flathead Valley school districts:

Bigfork – 8

Columbia Falls – 25

Evergreen – 19

Whitefish – 9

2013-14 fiscal year:

Bigfork - 7

Columbia Falls - 51

Evergreen - 54

Kalispell - 191

Whitefish - 22

Sparrow’s Nest will have an open house and celebration Nov. 6 at their new home in Kalispell. The home is at 204 7th Ave. W and the celebration is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

On the Web: facebook.com/sparrowsnestnwmt or sparrowsnestnwmt.org