Up North Prevention Helps Youth in Alpena

Up North Prevention is a program that helps youth in the northern Michigan area. They take key informant surveys and gather that information to determine what concerns they need to specifically address in each county.

In Alpena, their current focus is on the schools and students’ behavior as they reacclimate from online learning after the pandemic.

We just kind of educate them about whatever they’re getting into so they see it as it really is instead of through a lens of maybe what they’re getting offline, or on YouTube, or from friends,” said Prevention Specialist Chet Spencer.

Spencer has been with Up North Prevention for over two years now after spending 25 years with the Alpena Police Department, and has spent a majority of his career working with adolescents.

“What goes into making a good decision? What goes into managing your anger? What goes into impulse control?” he said. “Let’s talk about some of these things that maybe got you in a little bit of trouble and see how we can make you be better, we’ll see how you can improve.”

Up North Prevention has held a program in Alpena schools for those who have gotten into trouble, and the majority of students have responded to it positively.

“We’ve made that human connection with them and let them know, ‘hey, we’re here, we care, if you need some help or whatever, we will help you,’ and it’s really going quite well,” said Spencer. “It’s not what a lot of people would expect, that a student would be resentful cause it’s discipline or something like that. We don’t go into it with that mindset, and they don’t come out of it with that mindset.”

The concept of education and prevention over disciplinary punishment is an important one for Up North Prevention, and Spencer is looks forward to how the program evolves into the future.