Skill Up is the first standardized vocational program across all five regions in the DYS system, which serves 12-to 21-year-olds for offenses ranging from trespassing to manslaughter. Previously, young people could get silk-screening, culinary, and carpentry training in a few DYS facilities, but no formal training available to everyone. Now there is a $5.2 million budget and 23 programs across the state, including music production, bicycle repair, and horticulture. Participants earn $15 an hour for up to nine hours of skills training a week – money that’s released when they are.

The job skills and money are important, but the less tangible benefits they gain from the instructors, who also serve as mentors, are just as essential, DYS officials and participants said.

“It wasn’t just haircuts,” said Jamari, 18. “It was getting to know me, wanting to know what I wanted to do with myself, even after.”

“It makes me forget that I’m doing time,” he added. “It makes me feel like I’m just at a barbershop and I’m chopping it up with my friends and my family members.”

The Globe is not fully identifying the youths in state custody, whose criminal records are not public, to avoid having a negative influence on their future prospects.

A number of Skill Up instructors statewide were committed to juvenile treatment facilities in the past, sometimes in the same facilities where they teach, and this shared experience helps build relationships with the young men in the program. The providers also live in the cities where these youths will be released, helping create community bonds that many of them lacked before, said Cecely Reardon, the DYS commissioner, a former public defender.

Bikes not Bombs, the Boston nonprofit that runs the bicycle repair program, lets participants keep the bikes they fix and gives them the chance to apprentice for the nonprofit when they get out. Those in the silk-screening program designed and produced T-shirts for the Big E fair in Springfield last year.

Until recently, youth rehabilitation was focused mainly on education, Reardon said, but it was missing those who weren’t on an academic path.

“They leave here with something no one can ever take away from them,” Reardon said. “If we can help a young person be successful, that’s in the name of public safety.”

Completing vocational, educational, and other risk-reduction programs can reduce recidivism rates by more than half in some cases, according to a recent report by the Massachusetts Department of Correction.

Statewide, approximately 500 young people are in the DYS system, including those awaiting trial and those in treatment units such as the Connelly Center. Some have been released but voluntarily continue to receive services. In all, Skill Up has provided vocational training to more than 430 youths.

Adrian Major, who runs the DreamCutz barbershop with his wife, Alexis, as part of their Dreamcatcher Initiative nonprofit in Dorchester, said barbershops are an ideal training ground because of the therapeutic aspects to getting a hair cut or shave.

The hot towel on your face, the smell of aftershave, the conversation with a barber – all of this can turn a bad day into a good one, Major said.

“It can change a whole dynamic,” he said. “Anything that helps enhance your image makes you really feel better.”

And learning how to provide this service makes students feel good, too.

Major has seen young men progress, from something as small as admitting “my fault” when something goes wrong to opening up about their hopes and dreams. Even just improving their mood over the course of a few hours is a win, he said.

In addition to vocational skills, trainees learn about financial literacy, entrepreneurship, public speaking, and different aspects of employment such as performance reviews. Using proper language is a must in the barbershop: If they swear, they’re expected to do 15 push-ups — and often do so without being asked.

If they act out on the unit, they may stop getting temporarily but are still allowed to participate in the program. And the money has been a great motivator.

One trainee was recently involved in a misunderstanding with another resident, which in the past might have turned violent, according to DYS. But the Skill Up participant walked away, and later said he did so because he didn’t want to lose his program privileges.

Overall, morale has improved since the vocational program began, staffers said.

When people are about to leave DYS custody, career navigators help them open bank accounts and find jobs. Over the past few years, roughly 200 former Skill Up participants now out in the community have found full-time employment, officials said. One who learned carpentry skills and got his OSHA certification in treatment now works at Home Depot. Another who learned to silk-screen bought a $600 Cricut machine with his Skill Up earnings and opened an online Etsy business.

For Dante, who grew up in East Boston and was in juvenile treatment facilities from age 16 to 21, the instructors were like big brothers. Dante was released almost a year ago and still has a call with a Dreamcatchers mentor every Friday.

“We could talk to them about whatever, like therapy,” he said. “You see that they come from the same place as you and they’re doing well.”

Reentry “beats down on you,” Dante said, but things have been looking up lately. He recently landed a job as a delivery driver and does dog grooming on the side, with help from the starter kit of clippers, scissors, and combs he got from the program. In fact, it was Adrian Major who first noticed the haircut Dante gave his standard poodle and encouraged him to branch out.

“We create pathways,” said Alexis Major. “It’s about confidence, dignity that they build and they gain.”

Jaaco, 19, has done several Skill Up programs and is currently part of the barbershop crew in Roslindale. Demonstrating his skills on a recent day, he donned a black apron and placed a mannequin head on a tripod. In a matter of seconds, he removed all its hair – called “balding” – with a pair of clippers, using confident back-to-front strokes.

Jaaco has learned patience, respect, and unity through the vocational programs, he said, and his time in the Connelly Center has been instrumental: “This unit has formed me into becoming a better person.”

This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.

Alex Bregman’s failed contract negotiations with the Red Sox have entered into a debate around a Massachusetts city’s selection of a new ambulance provider, ending a 25-year partnership with a previous company.

The city of Medford is set to transition to Cataldo Ambulance on Monday, following weeks of back-and-forth with the City Council, which requested that leaders pause the move until more information and transparency were provided.

City Councilor George Scarpelli has advocated for the city to stick with Armstrong Ambulance, a company that he says provided “impeccable” service for the past quarter century, instead of bringing in Cataldo.

During a meeting last week, Scarpelli compared the city’s discussions in selecting a new ambulance provider to Bregman’s contract negotiations with the Red Sox.

“Those people that follow the Red Sox — Alex Bregman was going back and forth while the Chicago Cubs gave a better deal. He’s gone now,” Scarpelli said. “Well, at least they went to the Red Sox and said, ‘What is it? Can you do this?’ And the Red Sox said, ‘No. We’re not gonna give you a no-trade clause. We’re not gonna put that in.’”

“It’s no different,” the city councilor added.

Bregman signed a five-year, $175 million deal with the Cubs last week, after he opted out of the three-year, $120 million contract that he signed with the Red Sox last February.

Unlike the Cubs, the Red Sox refused to offer Bregman, who turns 32 in March, a full no-trade clause. This was a top priority for the veteran third baseman, who sought a stable long-term home to raise his two young sons.

“Literally, the first second free agency really opened, it felt like we knew the Cubs wanted our family to be here,” Bregman told reporters in Chicago on Thursday. “We had a lot of conversations over the course of the first three months of the offseason. … It was pretty evident they wanted me to be here.”

In Medford, controversy swirled after Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and other officials announced before the new year that the city had entered into a three-year contract agreement with Cataldo, breaking away from Armstrong.

Officials reiterated that the city didn’t terminate a contract with Armstrong and that the last agreement with the company expired in November. Concerns ranged from inadequate response times to a claim that the company refused to pay $75,000 in annual reimbursements owed to the city.

Nina Nazarian, the mayor’s chief of staff, emphasized that officials continued talks with Armstrong while beginning negotiations with Cataldo last spring.

“Honestly, I wish we weren’t here today. I think you all know that,” Nazarian told councilors last Tuesday. “I want to state that we frankly just didn’t want this to drag on. I also want to state very clearly that we didn’t want to cast shade on Armstrong Ambulance, but here we are.”

City officials have also highlighted how they expect service to improve through Cataldo as the company provides resources in responding to mental health and substance use emergency calls.

Scarpelli said he found it “alarming” that contract negotiations reportedly didn’t involve the fire and police chiefs, the city’s dispatch supervisor, nor the mayor. He claimed that the city’s outside legal counsel, KP Law, spearheaded discussions.

“That’s all I ask for: Everybody sit back at the table. We wouldn’t be here right now,” Scarpelli said. “We would clarify and clean up certain issues.”

No information about any of the children, their hometowns or health history has been released by the state.

State health officials could not be reached for comment Friday night.

At least two of the children were younger than 2 and were in Boston, the city’s Public Health Commission said. They are the first reported flu deaths in children in Boston since 2013, officials said.

Adult deaths from influenza are up to 107, according to the health department’s weekly influenza update. Forty-five adults died during the week from Dec. 28 to Jan. 3, the dashboard shows.

National health officials say 32 children have died from from flu so far this year and estimate there have been 9,300 adult deaths.

The flu season nationally appears to be waning with two straight weeks of decline in measures of flu activity, according to the latest government data released Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted data — for flu activity through last week — that showed a big drop in flu hospitalizations and a smaller but significant decrease in medical office visits due to flu-like illness.

CDC officials are calling the current respiratory virus season “moderate.” But that doesn’t mean the season is over, especially for flu. Second surges in flu activity often occur after the winter holidays.

There were 470 flu-related deaths in Massachusetts during the 2024-25 flu season, up from 251 in 2023-24, according to DPH.

The flu season typically spans from October through May, but the first flu-related death in Massachusetts this year was reported in August, data shows.

This year’s children’s deaths underscore the severity of this season’s influenza outbreak, public health officials said.

In November, state health officials warned of “rising flu activity and the potential for a significant surge” this season and have urged people to get vaccinated.

Medical experts have worried about this season because it has been dominated by a kind of flu virus, called A H3N2, that historically causes the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people.

Even more concerning, about 90% of the H3N2 infections analyzed this season were a new strain that differs from the version accounted for in this year’s flu shots.

In Boston, hospitalizations almost tripled and confirmed flu cases increased by 126 percent during the week of Dec. 14 to Dec. 27, city health officials said.

Nationwide, there have been at least 18 million flu illnesses and 230,000 hospitalizations reported, according to the CDC.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.