The angry mom never budged from her reclined position on the living room couch, even as the fight with her teenage daughter escalated to screaming. The daughter paced frantically. She’d gotten into the sort of trouble that brings the state into a kid’s life, so now she was supervised in her home by a community worker, whom I shadowed one evening.

When we first got to their apartment, mother and daughter asked the worker to adjudicate a disagreement. They began by talking over one another, airing their grievances, but in short order they began name-calling and shrieking whatever barb came to mind. Younger siblings looked on with unperturbed amusement, occasionally adding a little fuel of their own to the fire.

To end it, the community worker grabbed the daughter and told her she needed to come with us to cool off. Mother and daughter were still yelling at each other even as we had shut the apartment’s front door and headed down the stairs to the street.

Welcome to Casey Wilson’s daily world. She works for Tides Family Service as a caseworker, but everyone within the agency and on the streets calls her a “tracker.” With a partner, Melissa Brazil, Wilson literally keeps track of 25 “at risk” teens, monitoring them in their homes, neighborhood and schools to prevent their troubles from getting any worse than they already are.

“At risk” is a euphemism for these kids. Some were flagged by Truancy Court for skipping school; others by Family Court for behavior problems, and others came from the child-welfare caseloads at the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), the agency that refers all the cases. They’re not at risk; they’re in deep trouble.

Wilson’s day began as she got the truants up and off to school, not that there’s any guarantee they’d stay in school for the rest of the day. Then she checked on her other kids’ attendance in various schools in the low-income, urban community where she works.

She sets up counseling and health appointments, goes to court dates, and when parents sign off and schools agree, she participates in meetings about the youths. If these parents had to go to school every time their kid gets in trouble, they’d lose their jobs.

Wilson and Brazil take turns doing day and evening shifts. Tides has another team like them, and in the middle of the day everyone meets with the agency’s staff to help one another manage the kids and to trade information about what’s happening on the streets.

The evening tracker visits the families in their homes and deals with whatever has come up during the day, which can be a lot.

Each youth has unique issues, but as a group they are angry, defiant and hard to control. The girl who got in the car with us to cool off demanded that she be taken to a relative’s house, whining relentlessly. Wilson has a saint’s patience.

She says, “We love these kids. They’re wonderful. But they do make you want to tear your hair out.”

The families are poor people — little money or education, and not much community to bolster them. Some have been uprooted from their native country. Their rooms at home are tiny, the furniture large. In some homes, babies crawl about as Wilson works with the older youths and their parents. Televisions blare. Some households are calm, and some ignite with emotion.

In one home, a 6- or 7-year-old girl played so harshly with a tiny, terrified kitten, I would have intervened except that it was not my place to inject myself into the situation. Wilson didn’t notice the kitten because, once again, she was adjudicating a fight.

She says, “Our families don’t know how to handle situations appropriately. They don’t know how to control anger or how to solve a problem without fighting. The kids behave and react to how they were brought up. So it’s big with us to help the parents change how they relate to the kids.”

Her boss is Brother Michael Reis, the director of Tides. He says, “We teach the trackers that they can never give up on our kids. Never. They can’t give up on the families either. We’re trying to break a cycle, but if you’re really going to change a pattern that’s been in existence for years, sometimes generations, it won’t be fast. You can’t give up. So we take the families where they are. They push you away. You have to go back and back and back.”

When we, the community, don’t help these families, the consequences are expensive — socially and financially. Ignoring an obviously at-risk kid can easily lead to a prison sentence, which costs about $40,000 a year at the Adult Correctional Institutions. Locking a kid up at the Training School costs $100,000 a year. Group homes and residential care cost between $50,000 and $60,000 per kid per year. At a minimum, if unsupported, these kids would certainly drop out of school, inviting all the problems and expenses of a poor education. The Tides program costs about $9,000 per kid per year.

The more I study the forgotten or would-be forgotten children in our midst the more I marvel that we, the community, don’t invest more in community-based mental health and family services. And don’t do so a lot earlier than when the kids are teenagers. Only by working with children and families in their homes and neighborhoods can workers build on whatever assets the families have. Only in the home itself can social service workers help families solve the deeper problems whose symptoms are a kid’s truancy, rage or promiscuity.

Not doing so means to me that we really don’t care about breaking the cycle of poverty with all of its miseries. Not doing so means we cultivate poverty, eyes wide open.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch, Education and Employment, Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.