Local children's advocates have known for years that Howard County has a host of innovative recreational, scholastic and community programs for children and their parents.

Many also say that the county's children still face a number of challenges.

About 150 community leaders, parents, teachers and county agency officials attended a daylong summit on Friday to discuss solutions to the difficulties facing Howard families.

Some of the recommendations proposed at the summit were to: Find county funds to provide better transportation for children, especially those who live outside Columbia, to after-school and mentoring programs;

Use county facilities (school buildings and community centers, for example) for recreational purposes and for meetings with parents and other groups;

Get the religious and senior citizen communities involved with children as mentors;

Implement youth programs for at-risk and "borderline" children;

Offer more centers where teen-agers can hang out after school or change high school hours so that classes start later and children leave closer to the time their parents return home from work;

Implement a parent-awareness program and begin workshops to encourage parents to talk to their children.

"Howard County is often compared to Camelot," said Nancy Weber, chairwoman of the local Children's Board, while pointing to a cartoon illustration of a castle on an overhead projector. "Those of us who work with kids probably ask, 'Are we there yet?' Maybe not quite. But there's a lot that's right and there are certainly things that we can be proud of."

Howard County Executive James N. Robey said, "We are fortunate to have so many members of our community who are concerned and knowledgeable advocates for children."

He pointed to successful county after-school programs like the Cedar Park Lane Center in Columbia, where elementary and middle school children meet for tutoring, mentoring, computer labs and classes in social skills development.

Howard police Chief G. Wayne Livesay said so many resources for children exist in the county that "people just don't know what's available to them. That's a problem." He said the county needs to let parents know that they have options.

The local Children's Board, a public/private agency run out of the county's Office of Citizen Services, was started two years ago to serve as a forum to provide services for children.

The 19 board members -- community leaders, agency heads, child care providers and private citizens -- quickly found out that "children's needs in Howard County are significantly different from those in Baltimore or Prince George's County, for example," Weber said.

"This county is blessed to have so many resources -- both financially and with concerned citizens," she said.

Children's Board members meet regularly to identify local service providers for children and address the gaps, such as the lack of transportation for after-school programs.

After the summit, Richard Bienvenue, a Children's Board member and executive director of Our House Youth Home in Ellicott City, said he heard repeatedly the need for parents "to slow down a lot and pay more attention to their kids."

"But there's no single answer to these issues. Everyone has to work together to help the children of Howard County," he said. "We can't keep going around putting a Band-Aid on problems."

Howard County State's Attorney Marna McLendon agreed.

"We really have to encourage people to spend time with their families and not to just work so that we have more money," McLendon said after the daylong summit.

"We're very affluent in this county but I often wonder if that comes at a price. Some of the problems we have with our children could be solved if we got back to some of the basic values and principles of the family," she said.

McLendon said the summit presented "a lot of stuff that many of us have heard before but not in such a broad-based way. We have to get the message out to parents that there are solutions to their problems.

"We also need youth input -- and not just from the best of the best," she said. "We want to hear from regular kids."

Weber said listening to children is the key to the board's success.

"Kids are really savvy," she said. "They know what they want and they know the issues.

"It's so important to [have a] dialogue with them, to try to understand each other."

Pub Date: 3/29/99