Update on Valley-Lake Boy’s Home, Inc.
Periodically the Wahpeton Rotary club members like to hear an update on the Valley-Lake Boy’s Home. During their regular meeting at Prante’s on Tuesday noon September 16th thirty-six year Executive Director of the facility, Mark Engebretson brought the club up to date.
The home is located south of Breckenridge and serves forty to forty-five boys any one year; fourteen at any one time. The boys come from a one hundred mile radius and there is no common or predominate problem that brings them there. In August the home will be celebrating its fortieth year. Licensed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections all boys go through the court system to get there referred by parents, social workers from family services or probation officers. The boys have twenty-four hour supervision by the staff of fourteen for three hundred and sixty-four days a year. Every effort is made to get the boys home for Christmas.
While at the home the boys are expected to do chores and do everything at the facility except the actual cooking. They may be assigned to help in the kitchen. An assignment lasts for one week and if they do it well they get to move on to another assignment; if not the repeat the week.
In addition to the facility program and education at a separate room within Breckenridge Middle School forty percent of the boys are part of a chemo treatment program for alcohol and/or drugs.
One of their more successful programs has been their Boy Scout program when boys can join the Scouts and it is hoped will maintain that affiliation once they return home. Many do.
Eighteen years ago a recreational center about three quarters the size of a regular gym was built. This facility answers the requirement that each child have two hours of recreation per day. One problem has been that it was built with a concrete floor. Two years ago a thirty five thousand dollar program was started to redo the floor with a safer material that looks like and feels like wood. Youth groups from the community may book the facility for their use.