Dec. 25—With the amount of child runaways in Norman rising according to the Norman Police Department, resources and housing availability fall behind.

In an August city council study session, NPD Chief of Police Kevin Foster, presented to council overall police data that reported runaways in Norman are up 71% compared to previous years.

According to an NPD data set given to the Transcript that outlines the locations runaway instances occur, most come from group home facilities in Norman. Most homes in Norman are contracted out by different state agencies.

Some group homes, “do nothing to keep them there,” Foster said as he answered questions from council. “They can walk out the front door. Sometimes they follow them, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they call us five minutes after they left, sometimes it’s an hour after they left. It just varies and it’s a huge problem.”

Foster added that most of these numbers come from offenses committed by runaways such as theft and stolen vehicles. Numbers are also rising because NPD is starting to come out of COVID pandemic restrictions and enforcement is starting to return to normal.

“A runaway is just a type of missing person report,” said Sarah Schettler, public information officer for NPD. Usually, police will receive a report about a minor who has left their home and once they’re located they will be brought back to their original residence, Schettler said.

“Once a runaway has been found, and their welfare is checked, and as we followed up on that particular investigation, then that case would be closed, unless there was something within that case or investigation that was initiated further from either our agency or one of our partner agencies, such as DHS [Department of Human Services]” she said.

If there’s a particular reason or allegations of abuse, then NPD contacts the appropriate agency to investigate those issues, she said.

Children who run away can often be associated with being unhoused, but they can also be two distinct experiences, said David McLeod, a professor at the School of Social Work at OU.

“Those are complicated terms … so all unhoused children are not runaways, but a lot of runaways are unhoused, but may not be. So I think it’s about the degree to which someone had the opportunity to choose whether or not they were housed,” McLeod said.

He said that it’s very rare for a child to leave a home that has a typical, healthy family environment.

“They’re making choices to forgo the safety and security of the home. They have to believe that they have a better chance in the unknown. And so they’re coming from a place of trauma and adversity, and then moving into a place of even lower safety and certainly lower understanding,” he said.

There are some kids that leave for other reasons, such as if they’re part of the LGBTQ community, said Trina Hope, a criminology and sociology professor at OU.

Some kids do make it through and become resilient through the process, but there are many instances where this situation “makes great statistical and theoretical sense that it transitions them into a pattern of housing insecurity,” McLeod continued.

According to Hope, once children enter this more vulnerable world, it can lead to a “cumulative cycle” of poverty, homelessness and even crime.

She said that a lot of times being pulled into these different scenarios, especially crime, is due to the need to survive. The issue also stems from systemic issues that discriminate against those already in poverty and people of color.

“What we almost always do is we kind of wait for people to be damaged and criminal, and then we try to change them, and mostly through punishment, and that just doesn’t work very well,” she said.

McLeod echoed this statement by saying: “it’s hurtful, and I believe, disingenuous to say that we care about children, when we continue to put our children in the worst possible situations that we can find. And then we kind of create a ‘Hunger Games,’ where we are like, hey, well, if you’re a good Oklahoma kid, you’ll be able to fight your way out of this — just doesn’t seem like a very smart idea.”

Some resources such as Bridges, a nonprofit that provides housing for unhoused teenagers, hopes to alleviate the issue.

“First and foremost, it’s important to understand that all of our students live with us due to no fault of their own. So no one was sentenced to Bridges. Nobody was, you know, this was not a punishment for them. Students apply for our program. And they have to show a need. And so we have had students with incarcerated parents, deceased parents, we have had students that there’s an addiction in the home, and it’s not safe to be there. We have had students where there’s been abuse or neglect and it’s not safe to be there,” said Stacy Bruce, executive director of Bridges.

Bruce said she and the staff at Bridges work with their students to break the “cycle” of abuse they experienced and move forward.

“We know that if students drop out of high school, and don’t get their high school education, that things are a lot tougher for them in life. And so we at Bridges really want to help. We feel like we are helping our community by helping educate more teens in our community. And then we want our students to then turn around and become productive citizens in their communities,” she said.

She continued to say that she “would just caution people to not be quick to judge. Because we don’t know the situation. And so if you’re looking at an organization like bridges, none of our students did anything wrong to live here.”

Bridges works very closely with Norman Public Schools and the district also has representatives who help children dealing with poverty and homelessness. These resources are a requirement of the McKinney Vento Homeless Education Assistance Program, which works to ensure that these children receive an equal education to their peers.

“Any of those barriers we try to make sure that they aren’t there, and that we make it as easy as possible for these students to get an education. I think all of us don’t realize how close that we could be to being homeless. Many people, you know, live paycheck to paycheck, and because maybe they are one parent family or even two parent family and they lose their jobs. They become homeless. And that’s sometimes different from what we think about homeless people in general. But it’s very common. And it’s very difficult for these families and for these children,” said Dana Morris, director of federal programs and former homeless liaison at NPS.

Hope said there is a lot of expectation for educators to offer guidance to these students, but certain policymaking and political decisions often hinder those capabilities.

“A great teacher can make a difference. But we can’t solve society’s problems by having great teachers, when we don’t pay teachers, anything in this state. So everybody gets burnt out and leaves, you know, really quickly, especially if you’re teaching the poor community. So yeah, I think we put a tremendous amount of expectations on teachers,” she said.

She said that resources and funding towards social services, like DHS, are continually cut which also adds to the issue.

In a similar statement, McLeod said “we know statistically, exactly what the problems are. It’s not a mystery. And the fact that we’re kind of screaming from the top of the building, trying to get anyone to listen. But as a community, we continue to vote and put in place policies that are setting our children up for failure. And it’s a really tough thing.”

He continued to say that in order to make progress, communities need to start with investing in their youth.

“Where will we get the best return on investment as a community? I believe that is starting with services to youth, and probably starting with families who are facing eviction or at that breaking point where they’re just about to become homeless. If we look at it from a financial standpoint, and how much energy it will take to have a systemic impact, that will keep people from hurting other people going into these spaces,” he said.