Provider Spotlight: Vantage Point Children & Family Services

Here is the transcript from our Q&A:

Isaac: Could somebody tell me a little bit about the background of the organization? The three main questions I’m trying to answer are, why did it start? When did it start? And where did it start?

Dwayne: Why? Where? and when? I know personally, when I decided that I wanted to do this, I was looking for people that I related to, that was like minded, had the same kind of passion, and desired to better humanity. As corny as that may sound. So, I reached out to Will and Keon Fraser, who are brothers. We were all working at the same place of employment, so that was my mindset. It was more so based upon having the ability to do things and have your own ideas be implemented without much restriction, so to speak.

Dwayne: When? Wow, that’s a great question. I can’t remember exact date, it was maybe six or seven years ago.

Kathy: I think it was 2013.

Dwayne: Okay, 2013.

Keon: I think it became official in 2014.

Dwayne: I never can remember that that exact for some reason, so that was that was when. And where? It’s one of those same old stories about kind of like a garage type thing. We started meeting at Keon’s house. Us three and a few other people.

Isaac: Does anyone else want to jump in on that question before I move on?

Willie: For me, I’ve always had a desire to work with kids, so when Dwayne presented the idea, it was pretty much a no brainer for me. So, I just wanted to add things that I had learned over the past couple years working with kids before. So, it was kind of a no brainer when we thought about going into business and working with kids and doing this type of work.

Keon: That’s similar for me like I always had a passion just to work with adolescent boys from the inner city and that was my main reason for getting into it, but obviously the company has grown into so much more, but originally, I just wanted to really help my community. Kids that look like me coming from my background, I just felt like I had a lot to offer them, but like I said, the company is growing into so much more now. Now we service just about everybody. That was my original reason for getting involved.

Kathy: I came on a couple years ago. I’ve known all these gentlemen for years. We’ve all worked with children, and I have a degree in human resources, so I worked with the background checks of what you need to be able to work in this field and those different aspects that I was able to bring to the table to help vantage point bring on more providers and grow, and make sure that they are meeting all the criteria and background checks and that we’re not violating any codes or anything like that. So, that’s where I come from.

Isaac: Keon started touching on this, but generally what would you say is the mission of vantage point?

Keon: I would say the mission is just to better the community and, do things the right way, you know, morally correct, and then the main thing is just to show people that they can do the same exact thing that we’re doing, being a owner and a boss to some people, a supervisor. Just being relatable, treating them fair, because we all come from a background where we worked in this field and we know what our employees need because, we were once in their shoes. So just being, morally correct, doing things the right way, helping people, and at the end of the day, providing employment to people that need it. And just like I said, doing it the right way, and helping our community and helping our youth.

Isaac: What are the services that you provide?

Kathy: We range from mentoring, tutoring, home based case management, home based supervised visitations, parent education. We do CMHI, which is this skills habilitation family support training for parents. It’s a wide range, I think the only thing we don’t really cover is therapy, so we don’t do anything that’s therapeutic.

Isaac: Who are the populations that you serve?

Dwayne: We serve everyone. We serve from probation to kids, to kids with disabilities, kids with autism and speaking to what Keon said, kind of backtracking a little bit to your earlier question about, what was our passion, or how do we get to this point? Keon said we want to work with people in his community or young kids who kind of look like us. I want to also add, I have twin boys who have severe autism who are nonverbal and very low functioning. So, to Keon’s point, that’s how we kind of end up serving everybody because we all come from the inner city. So, we all have a passion for helping kids in that kind of environment, but then we all came from a work environment where we work with kids with disabilities as well. So, that kind of encompasses everything. It’s nobody that we feel like we can’t serve.

Kathy: That is one of the reasons we get called for a lot of cases is we have a wide range of providers. We have a lot of providers that have a wide range of abilities, working with different children.

Isaac: Where geographically you’re serving?

Kathy: Dwayne and I are located here in Indianapolis, and we do the donut counties and then we will also step outside of that if there’s a need. We get a lot of Choices case managers, calling and seeing if will go to Marion Indiana or Crawfordsville, those kinds of areas. And then you have Will and Keon that are both located in Lake County. So, we have cases where they’re transporting clients from Lake County to Indy, dealing with different cases out there in their area.

Isaac: Can you share a little bit about some of the ways your organization is making a positive impact on the communities that you’re serving?

Dwayne: One of the things that we do, we have Vantage Point Children and Family Services, but we also have a Vantage Point Initiative which is our not-for-profit entity, where we have money that we fund raised to help out other people in the community, so we do things as broad as helping people get new tires for their car; helping people get beds for their rooms. We collaborate with the organization called the Indiana Mentor Network, which Vantage Point is one of the founding members of that organization. We’re taking kids this summer on a five-day trip to Philadelphia and New York, riding from Indianapolis, where we’re going to meet with kids in Philadelphia and taking those kids from Philly to Indianapolis to New York to meet other kids. So, we do a range of different things, and a lot of stuff we do, we don’t charge for. We give back a lot, a whole lot iand in his field most people are doing things for a billing standpoint. If you’re not billing, if it’s not making you money, if it doesn’t make cents, it doesn’t make sense. With us, we’re a little different, a lot different. I think we pride ourself on making sure we give back. We can’t just say if we can’t get paid for it, we can’t do it.

Kathy: We get a lot of calls from the care coordinators that are looking for something unusual, different, quick. And they know when they call us, the only way I’m going to say no, is if it’s absolutely impossible, even if we’re not going to make any money. If it helps them out, and it takes it off their plate, we’re going to do it and they know that. I think that’s one of the big reasons that we get so many referrals is because we are so helpful. We have a family that requires two transports and you’re going to have to get the kids from Marion and you have to get the parents from a different city, and then they don’t have the money to do things, so I gave a provider money yesterday to go get supplies for a picnic and they’re going to go to the park, you know those kinds of things, that’s out of our pocket. I mean, we’re not making anything on that, but it’s helping the family. So, I think that’s one of the things that we get a lot of calls about, is because that we don’t hesitate, and other providers will [say] “this family is too difficult”, and we don’t think about that at all. We take a lot of difficult cases.

Isaac: Are there any things that people might not know about your organization that you want folks to know about your organization? Any misconceptions or just something people might not be aware of that you’re doing?

Keon: I would just say all of the services that we provide because a lot of people just refer to us as a mentoring company or mentor agency. Especially people that know me, they’ll say, “your mentor agency or your mentoring business”, but like I say, it’s grown into so much more than when we first started. So, like Kathy talked about all the different services that we provide, I don’t think we can be bottled as a mentor agency no more. We provide so many different services even, I don’t think anyone touched on this, but helping adults find employment, father engagement, all those things. So, it’s not just kids or adolescents, but just helping everybody.

Willie: I mean it’s literally a homegrown business, a few men and women came together, put a plan together, put the idea together, went through every step of the process. I still remember the very first referral we got, so we started very small, and we worked and we grinded to the position that we’re in right now.

Kathy: Recently Dwayne and I recently found out that we’re one of the biggest providers that Choices works with. We didn’t think we were that big. We have 60 providers and thought that was just normal. We have a lot of people that want to come work for us, and we treat people right and I think that word is out there.

Dwayne: To add onto it with the others have said, when cases close out, we don’t disengage with families, we keep in touch with a lot of families with their cases are closed and to the point where the relationship and bond is so strong. You know a sad situation like one of our kids getting killed, the parent reached out, to Keon, because that’s the relationship and bond that we have. It’s not like the case is closed, so now we don’t need to talk to you no more, we’re not billing for you. We still keep in touch with people when the cases are closed. So, I think that’s something that we would love to let people know that we just don’t forget about you when the funding stops.

Isaac: What inspired you as individuals to become providers?

Willie: Well, for me it took me back to my childhood, just starting to work with kids, I immediately thought about guys that I grew up with and thought that all they really needed was someone to spend some time with them. Somebody to be a positive impact in their life and maybe their lives would have turned out differently so that that was my inspiration, just thinking back to my childhood and having some friends that I actually lost to violence and thinking like what would happen if he had a mentor? At the age of 13 or 14 how will his life have been different? So, that’s what I went into everyday working with kids, like how can I be a positive impact? How can I change this kid’s life? So, that was my initial inspiration.

Kathy: I worked at a company starting out as a direct care provider and moved into management and I did that for years, then I got to the point that I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I enjoyed working with the children. So, there’s a big difference between working with children and being on the ground running versus some other aspects that were needed. So, I applied for human resources at the company, and I decided if I didn’t want to work with the kids on the floor, that maybe I could find the right kind of people to work with the kids, so that became my goal. I went back to school and got my degree in human resources and continue to learn and just focus on getting the right people with the youth versus just going out and working in a corporate type office.

Dwayne: My passion came from my roots it’s similar to Wills and Kathy as well, definitely more in line with Will. I come from a background, I’m from Philadelphia and South Philly to be exact. My parents had me young, so they struggled with raising me, so my grandmother stepped in, did a huge job in helping me stay on track, and then we have what we call, old heads, which is an endearing statement for guys in your community that that basically make sure you stay on track even if they were doing something wrong, they made sure you wasn’t doing it. So, that was my passion and, when I graduated, high school like 1985, I went to the Navy and I got stationed in San Diego. My first thing was to find the neighborhood that kind of was similar to the neighborhood I grew up with and then introduce myself to some of the middle schools, elementary schools, and high schools. So, I started mentoring kids in elementary school, I’m only 19 years old myself, but the passion came from always remembering all the people that did something for me, the older guys. I got guys a whole bunch of friends of mine and they’re older than me they’re like older brothers. I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for them. I definitely would have been on a different path, but they made sure that didn’t happen. So that’s where my passion comes from.

Keon: Yeah, I’m pretty much similar, just having a passion to help my community. I think there’s a lack of positive males in the inner city and just coming from it like my brother said, I kind of felt like I knew what a lot of inner city kids needed. I mean you could never save the world but I think saving one or two [kids] just by investing time in them, I think it’s all worth it. So, that was a passion of mine. That’s what drove me to this field.

Isaac: What would you say in your opinion is the best part of being a provider and doing the kind of work that you do?

Willie: I would say outcomes. That’s the best part for me. I had a kid that was one of my first three clients that I had, and he just graduated high school and got engaged. You know? So, I saw his mother, she sent it to me in a text. So, that’s the best part for me, just seeing a kid like that, seeing where he came from to where he is right now. That’s the best part for me.

Dwayne: Yeah, to kind of echo what Will was saying, literally what he said. To Will’s point I had a situation where a person I ran into in Kroger, me and my wife is shopping and I’m hearing him say my name “Mr. Dwayne”, and I’m turning around, and I look and then I recognize who it is to come up and shake my hand and give me a hug with his girl. He has his baby with him, and he is shopping. To Will’s point it is no better feeling than that because you know where they were at, and you know where they were headed.

Keon: Yeah, I think I’m just echoing what they say. Just seeing those positive outcomes and then also just being a key resource to some of these children and families. Because I mean you’ll have some of these kids, you may know them a year or two, or work with him a year or two, and three to four years down the line, they might have a situation and a parent will reach out to you and be like, “He wanted to talk to you.” And I’m like, “what makes me so special out of everybody in the world.” He could reach out to family, friends or whatever the child might be struggling with something and want to reach out to a provider that he worked with years ago or just for a brief amount of time. It’s just, you know, having that impact in a positive way on the kid in such a short time, that makes me feel good.

Kathy: I don’t see it on the outcome side so much. Mine has always been finding the right match for the client. So, case managers will be like, “Do you have somebody available?” And I’ll be, “yeah” and they’re like, “well, can you tell me who I want to put on the referral?” And I’m like “I’d really like to see the referral first so I can find the best match for what they’re dealing with.” By having so many providers, we do have a lot more qualifications. We have ABA specialists that, that’s what they do on their other jobs, things like that. So, if they have autism, we can provide that. If it needs to be a male mentor or female, you know, what’s their specialty? I like to match up the right people, and if it doesn’t work then move on to somebody else. You’re there for them and the best outcome. So, that’s kind of my favorite part.

Isaac: Is there anything else that I did not cover that you want to say, or you want to add before we wrap up this interview? Just anything else that you think should be included in the discussion about the work that you all do.

Dwayne: We have a phone call that we do every Saturday at 10:00 o’clock in the morning. It’s called A Virtual Village. We established what we called the Indiana Mentor Network, which Vantage Point was one of the founding members, along with a few other providers, New B.O.Y, which is led by Kareem Hines, Inner Beauty, which is led by Crystal Hines, ATAP All Things For All People, which is led by Deidra Loyd, the L.A.S.E.R Project which is led by Jack Thomas, See 1 Change which is led by Alan Archibald and Urban Ministries, which is led by Bwana Clements. Within those people I just mentioned, we have three therapists in there as well. So, we decided to do a collaboration piece. We started this before Covid but then Covid came, so we had to find a way to be resourceful and be versatile. So, we end up starting a zoom call about a year and a half ago. And from that zoom call, The Virtual Village, we started the young entrepreneurs program which we have entrepreneurs from 6 years old to 25 years old. From, elementary all the way through college. This is also the reason why the trip is coming up July 22nd to July 26. I really believe collaboration is huge in his field. We all have our own programs, but it’s power in numbers and we’re reaching a lot more people in this program we’re doing right now. It’s literally nationwide. It’s just not here in Indianapolis. We have from the Indiana Mentor network, now the Philidelphia Mentor Network exists and New York Mentor Network exists, the Florida Mentor Network exists, the San Diego Mentor Network exists so. That’s what I would say. You know, if we can pass the information that be very helpful.

Isaac: Dwayne, Kathy, Willie, Keon if there’s anything else you want to say, feel free, but otherwise, just thank you so much for your time and especially for the work that you do just in the month I’ve been working with Choices I’ve got to meet so many great people and it’s been cool to hear about the work that you are doing. So, thank you for that.

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