Inside the youth ranch: House parent shares internal perspective

By Andrea Bruner, White River Now

To fully tell the story of the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Youth Ranches might take several weeks. More than 2,300 children have arrived at the ranch, each with his or her own reason for being there but they have one thing in common – they’ve entered the foster care system through no fault of their own and need a safe place to land.

For 48 years, the ranch on Earnhart Road in Bethesda has provided neglected, abused, and/or abandoned children a place to call home and someone to care for them.

One of those house parents is Cynthia Corbett, who has been at the ranch for eight years.

Corbett said she had spent her whole life in California but just one visit to Arkansas was all it took for her to fall in love with the lush landscape.

“I’d come out a year before to pick up a horse and just fell in love with it. It was so green and there was so much water,” she said.

After her daughter was born, she started making plans to move east.

“I put my house up for sale, then started looking for houses to buy and checking out different towns. I found a nice house in Batesville, and Batesville had this hometown, safe environment to it. Crime was low, the school was good, and I liked there were two colleges in town.”

That was in 2005, and Corbett joked that the only moment of regret came the first time she was bitten by a chigger “because I did not know what that was.”

Being a stay-at-home mom was quite the contrast from her life in California, where she spent nine years working at residential treatment facility for young offenders.

“This (facility in California) was for kids that had committed violent crimes, gangbangers, sexual assault, things like that – it was their last chance before they went to jail. They went to school there; they never left the property. It was more of a lockdown facility, and it held boys from ages 10 to 18. …

“It was hard because the kids you got were already criminals, so there was no changing their lives or trying to better their lives. It was sad because they would finish the program and go back to the same environment, go back to the same gangs, go back to doing the same crimes.”

Many of the youth she worked with than one child died when they got back out – shot by a rival gang member, overdose or some other tragic ending.

“I felt like I had failed,” she said. “It was heartbreaking. There was a lot of turnover among the staff. They couldn’t keep people and a lot of the time we were working double shifts. I just thought there’s got to be something better than this.

“I got really burned out. We weren’t really helping kids – we were just housing them.”

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After moving to Batesville, Corbett eventually went to work as a veterinary assistant and dog groomer but when she and her husband separated, she said she was looking for a new start. When she heard about the job at the youth ranch as a relief house parent, Corbett felt like it was a place where she could make a difference.

As Philip Ives, ASYR chief operations officer, explained, a relief house parent is someone who comes into the home for up to eight days a month to provide support for the full-time house parent.

“Their duties are the same as those of the full-time house parent, but they only stay for a short period while the full-time house parent takes their days off,” he said. “We often explain this role by comparing it to a substitute teacher in relation to a full-time teacher.

“Relief house parents are crucial to our organization, as they help ensure that full-time house parents have the necessary breaks to recharge.”

About three years after Corbett came on board at ASYR, one of the other house parents was getting ready to retire. It was the house that she had been doing the majority of her relief work for, and she knew the kids pretty well. When the ranch asked if she wanted to take over, Corbett wasn’t sure she if she did, but she said the kids in the house begged her to take the job.

Cynthia Corbett

Corbett decided to take over as house parent at Gratton Hall, which is one of the few co-ed houses at the ranch, Corbett said.

“We have four bedrooms that can hold eight kids, with two beds to a room,” she said.

Sometimes, sibling groups arrive at the house, but she said right now, she doesn’t have any siblings.

The majority of her residents stay about a year. “That’s usually when DHS decides to reunite them. Basically, the parents have done everything they need to do and DHS tells them (the kids) they can go back. Otherwise, DHS will terminate the parents’ rights and put the kids up for adoption. I’ve had five adopted.”

The ranch takes ages 5-19; Corbett’s current residents are ages 14-17, with one turning 18 in July.

“After they turn at 18, they have a choice: They can stay in care and go to college and stay living at the ranch, or they also have the choice to leave (such as to go back home or strike out on their own). The ranch is one of the few places that allow them to stay until 21 years old,” Corbett said.

There are a few independent living situations at the ranch where young people can live by themselves, she went on to say. “My house has an apartment connected to it,” she said.

“A lot of them have no support” from extended family members, Corbett said, but the ranch will help kids get their driver’s licenses, fill out job applications and so on.

“Living at the ranch helps them save money,” she said, explaining that some kids go on to buy a vehicle or even a house.

“Most of the kids here from DHS,” she said, referring to the Department of Human Services. In those instances, the children have been removed from a bad situation, and there is no family qualified or able to take them in.

“The first day, the kids are trying to figure out what’s going on. They’re scared, upset – they don’t understand why they were taken away. They think everything is fine; it’s normal to them.

“Some are angry for a very long time. Some will put their parents on a pedestal. Most kids are mad at the system and why they’ve been taken.

“They’re not bad kids. We get the kids that need a home, need stability, need structure and a home. That’s who we’re getting.”

She said many people have a misconception that the kids who come there are “bad” or that it’s a lockdown facility, but the name is merely derived from the ranch’s founders: some of the sheriffs in Arkansas who were concerned enough for the children being placed in residential homes. The small group of sheriffs grew until all 75 sheriffs in Arkansas were on board, searching for ways to support a home for children that would rely solely on Arkansans’ generosity.

Still, even in the small community of Bethesda – where the ranch has been located since 1976 – people ask Corbett, “What if they escape? What if they get out of their rooms at night?”

She reiterated that the ranch is not a lockdown facility, and the residents are not sent there for correction. Still, she said the ranch kids have to be held to a different standard because they’re perceived in a certain way in the community.

“You’re giving them love, not punishing them.”

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A typical day during the school year starts with the kids getting up, getting ready, and going to school. Some have appointments or extracurricular activities, and a few also work.

Summer is even busier, as everyone at Gratton Hall is involved in 4-H as well as Boy Scouts (including the girls).

The kids help plan various excursions, like paddling the Buffalo River, spending the night on the USS Razorback submarine in Little Rock, attending sporting events or going camping at Lake Ouachita (where they paddle to an island and stay the night). All the residents are in 4-H and do competitions throughout the year. If they win at District O’Rama, they go on to State O’Rama, and this year the house will spend four days in Fayetteville at the state competition.

During the county fair, “her kids,” as she calls them, were showing rabbits, pigs and goats, so that took extra work to make sure everyone was where they needed to be.

“My house started a Nigerian goat herd. We hope to eventually have enough for every kid at the ranch to show one,” Corbett said. “It gives them a sense of confidence, the ability to self-regulate, and a feeling of belonging.

“That’s one reason why people join gangs; it’s the same reason people do drugs – they are looking for somewhere to belong. This gives them place to fit in that is positive, and it also gives them responsibility and builds them up to be better people.”

“These kids are resilient. It’s amazing when you look at their background – how funny they are, how amazing they are, their empathy is compared to others.”

She said one resident plays baseball while another is on the Batesville High School swim team, which won the state championship in May, and last year a team of canoers from her house won the White River Canoe Race last year.

“My house had two teams entered in the race, which is 120 miles over three days. Both teams won in their category,” Corbett said. “That is a major confidence builder for the kids. It’s not just you against other kids but you against the river – it’s tough, grueling. They’ll remember that race their whole life, even if they don’t win first place.”

She said there is a safety boat that follows the boats for the three days, but otherwise, “it’s just them out on the water.”

“Last year, one of the other boats was having problems and my kids had to go get the safety boat,” she said. One of the paddlers was in medical distress when the Gratton Hall team came upon their boat.

The medics at the site told the group if help had been delayed even an hour, the person would have died.

“We were super proud of them,” Corbett said. “One of the ones who did that has gone on to become a lifeguard at the community center. …

“These kids are resilient. It’s amazing when you look at their background – how funny they are, how amazing they are, their empathy is compared to others.”