Brownback proposes mentoring for Kansans on public assistance | The Wichita Eagle

Gov. Sam Brownback floated a plan to offer a mentoring program to people taking advantage of government anti-poverty programs Thursday when he touted a similar program for juvenile offenders.

Brownback has toured the state this week to highlight community-based programs aimed at rehabilitating prisoners. He talked about the Mentoring4Success program, which recently was expanded to help juvenile offenders after being used among adult offenders for several years.

“Used to be we gave you a bus ticket, 20 bucks and, OK, we’re done. Well, we found that when you do that your recidivism rate goes way high because people then end up going back to the circumstance that’s familiar to them … that got them in trouble in the first place,” Brownback said. “So we work now a lot with changing and working with people on re-entry. How do I get back in society?”

About 20.7 percent of Kansas convicts reoffend in the first year after their release. Participants in the program reoffend at a rate of 8.7 percent. Brownback said the mentoring program has been so successful in reducing recidivism that he would like to copy the model to address other social challenges.

“We’re going to try to do something similar on our poverty programs as well, getting mentors for people who are in our poverty system,” Brownback said.

The governor said he is working with the Kansas Department for Children and Families to develop a mentoring program for people living in poverty and using public assistance programs with the goal of “getting people out of poverty and keeping them out of poverty.”

“It’s a similar sort of situation where you have a lack of infrastructure for a lot of people. The family structure isn’t there or you’ve had a number of difficulties,” Brownback said. “We need people with good hearts willing to step up and help out.”

Brownback has enacted a series of welfare reforms since taking office, including establishing work requirements for many welfare beneficiaries. He said participation in the mentoring program would be voluntary.

He said he did not have a timeline for when such a program would start.

Rep. Gail Finney, D-Wichita, responded to Brownback’s idea by saying “a mentorship is always great. But of course, a job would be better.”

Finney said many people on public assistance in Wichita are actively looking for jobs. Others have jobs that don’t pay well enough to support a family, she said, contending that raising the minimum wage would be a better way to alleviate poverty in Kansas.

“A lot of people that I know are receiving food stamps, they’re working low-wage jobs. But they’re working just like you and I,” she said. “So it keeps them in a poverty situation and it keeps our children in poverty when we don’t have a decent-paying job.”

Brownback was joined at his news conference by Anna Hockett, a 19-year-old graduate of the juvenile mentoring program, and her mentor Linda Hodgson, a retired hair stylist who has been volunteering with inmates for more than 18 years.

Hockett was convicted of attempted second-degree murder at age 16. Since her release from the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex, she has begun taking classes at Kansas City Kansas Community College.

Hodgson began mentoring Hockett when she was still incarcerated.

Hockett said one thing that strengthened their relationship was the realization that her mentor has her own struggles “but she still pulls through.”

Hodgson recounted that the day she drove Hockett to her new housing placement in Kansas City, Kan., they got lunch at the famous Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que.

Hockett filled out a job application and she now works at Joe’s Kansas City, which the governor said was his favorite barbeque restaurant.

“I’m so proud of her. Her successes are due to her, not to me,” Hodgson said.