Up with young people - Youth Services International

Nation's Business, August, 1995 by Janet L. Willen

Growing businesses share their experiences in creating and marketing new products and services.

Ask W. James Hindman about his business, and he'll tell you about children. He'll describe the girl who can't look anyone in the and the boy who had never met any who had a job. He'll speak about children who are unwanted and children who are abused, children who live in despair for the present and children with no sense of the future. Then he'll talk about the children who enter his programs and go on to college and productive jobs.

You could easily mistake Hindman for a teacher, a social worker, or a psychologist. Actually, the chairman of the board a d CEO of Youth Services Int Owings Mills, Md., is an entrepreneur. Among his successes is Jiffy Lube International, which he sold in 1990. He intended to live in retirement, but as a member of a governor's task force on privatization, he visited a state-run facility for troubled youths in Maryland. That visit changed his life--and the lives of thousands of children.

Hindman says the conditions of the juvenile-detention center were deplorable. The facility was filthy and smelled of urine, with employees sleeping on the job and children looking out of locked cells in the middle of the day. "It was the kind of environment that would turn a kid to hate you and to have more hatred in his heart than you could ever imagine," he says.

Subsequently, he attended a policy-making conference and was surprised that the agenda did not include adjudicated youths. He was told there weren't enough funds, so those children were written off. "If no one else wants them, I'll take them," he decided.

Hindman looked for ways to solve what he calls a national problem by taking the approach he knows best--a business approach. Youth Services International was formed as a public company in January 1991. The company's mission is to create and manage rehabilitation programs for troubled youths in juvenile-service facilities. It now has contracts with six states to operate 12 facilities; 11 are in operation, serving 1,400 students actively and 600 more in follow-up programs. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1994, Youth Services International earned $2.1 million on revenue of $34.9 million, compared with a net loss of $1.6 million and revenue of $8.9 million the previous year. Hindman expects revenue of $51 million by the end of the 1995 fiscal year.

The company operates in abandoned or underutilized facilities that it leases from states and renovates. Hindman estimates that Youth Services Intern saved taxpayers $16 million in physical-plant costs alone.

Along with his business acumen, Hindman brought to Youth Services International his firsthand knowledge of institutional life. The son of a single mother, Hindman spent six years in an orphanage in Iowa. He says the structured environment instilled strong values in him.

Programs at his schools operate around what Hindman calls the three I's: intensity (a full day's schedule), integrity (doing the light thing even when no one's looking), and intimacy (students appreciating that they are lovable and sharing their feelings).

Students, 15 to 17 years old on average, usually enter through the courts, but some are sent by social workers because they have been abandoned or abused or their parents are in jail. Most stay about nine months. The staff-to-student ratio is 1-to-1. Discharged students can receive tuition aid and employment counseling. Of the 1,025 students who have "graduated," 780 have returned to high school, 162 have jobs, and 54 are in college.

Letters Hindman receives almost daily offer evidence that former students are thriving. One boy wrote that three of his neighborhood friends were dead, and he added, "Thank you for saving my life." A girl wrote, "Here I have learned self-discipline and that my positive behaviors will get me farther in life."

The many youngsters who leave his programs and do well have convinced Hindman that he was right not to write off these children. He hopes government and business leaders won't either.