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A place to call home
Assurance Home has been helping at-risk youth since 1979
Erin Green
Vistas Editor - Roswell Daily Record
September 28, 2008
 Jean Snyder, director of the James Ranch Youth Shelter, discusses some art with an Assurance Home resident.
The 17-year-old is studying three hours a day for his GED exam and working part-time at Arby's. Once he passes that, he said, he'll think more about what he wants to do with his life.
"I have a lot of goals in mind," Murray said. "I might want to be an equine therapist or maybe an auto mechanic. I haven't made up my mind yet. We'll see after I get my GED."
The young man in a blue shirt, jeans and sneakers, is one of 21 youth - 12 boys, nine girls - living at the Assurance Home, a private, non-profit organization that opened its doors to at-risk youth, dedicated to creating positive change in the lives of troubled youth through compassion, respect, opportunity and example.
Murray's life hasn't been easy - he's experienced abuse, involvement in gangs and was mauled by a dog when he was 10 - but he loves Assurance Home, because it is home.
"If I could, I'd stay here my whole life," he said.
The Assurance Home, a United Way agency, has been helping make a difference in the lives of high-risk adolescent children since 1979. The organization provides a therapeutic group home for boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 18 who have been abused or neglected or who have been abandoned and are homeless.
The organization recently received a donation of $5,000 from the Eastern New Mexico Medical Center board of trustees - a gift that was extremely appreciated, said Ron Malone, executive director of Assurance Home.
The money, he said, was placed in a fund for the general support of the children at the group home and the James Ranch Youth Shelter, a shelter for children in immediate crisis situations and in the organization's transitional housing
"We help homeless and at-risk kids," Malone, known to one and all at the home as "Pops," said. "A lot of the kids who live at Assurance Home have no other place to live. ... A lot of our kids have experienced a lot of trauma."
To help the shelter's youth, Malone said the organization works with the teens in clinical programs, including therapy sessions and 24-hour access to therapists, a ropes course, art therapy and horsemanship.
Lee Kyser is the director of the Mustang Project - a program where Assurance Home's teens work with wild mustangs to train them - called "gentling" - to be therapeutic riding horses for disabled children in programs such as "Reins for Life."
Kyser said the program has been a huge success.
"It's been a great program for us," Kyser said, adding the program has been profiled by the CBS News "Eye on America" segment. "We try to get them to where they're ready to be used in a therapeutic program. ... A lot of our kids can really relate to the horses."
Assurance Home has five horses right now, Kyser said. As the kids work with the horses, each learn a lot from each other, he said.
"The image of the horse can be a lot different from the actual horse," Kyser said. "As humans, we communicate through sound, but horses don't. The kids find out a lot about themselves from working with the horses. They each have to be able to trust. That's one thing the kids have learned, is not to trust."
But the kids do learn, as do the horses and the program has had huge benefits.
Working with the horses is actually Murray's favorite part of the program.
"This has been a pretty good place to be," he said. "No other place I've been has a horse riding program. Horses don't talk back or give advice. ... Just being here and working with the horses - that's what makes the program the best. They get the kids and horses together. We help the horses and the horses help us. It's pretty cool."
But for Murray, spending time and talking with Kyser and "Pops" is also a very special part of the program. Murray said he's developed a tight bond with both men.
"They're the people I want to be when I grow up," he said. "If I had a father, I'd want him to be like Lee (Keyser). He cares about me and stuff."
It's the same for Kyser.
"The feeling's mutual," he said. "I get all emotional about Chico. He's had a tough life, but he's a great kid."
And it's all about helping kids like Murray, Malone said, adding the program has a high success rate. According to the organization's summer/fall 2008 newsletter, Assurance Home programs provided services to a total of 81 children, with a 96 percent success rate in outcomes, whether the kids returned to their families, were referred to other programs for additional treatment or were otherwise successfully discharged from the home.
For Malone, the program is about treating kids with respect and teaching them to trust and respect others in return. And, he said, it's a program that works.
"We try really hard to treat kids with respect, in a nonjudgmental way," he said. "We treat them with respect and dignity, we give them a nice environment. ... A large number of our kids prove us right.
"It's not how you handle the good times in your life - anybody can handle the good times - but how you handle the tough times that measures your character.
"A lot of our kids have a lot of character," he said.
For more information about Assurance Home, its programs and services, call 575-624-1780 or visit www.assurancehome.org.
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