• Serve 402 children in crisis due to circumstances beyond their control.

• Place almost 80% of our discharged children with a family.

• Implement two new community-based programs which currently work with over 65 children in their homes and communities.

• Enroll 17 children in our afterschool and summer camp programs.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

Italian Home for Children, like most other businesses and individuals, has struggled along with the economy for the past year.  Our services to children and families are based on contracts with school systems, state agencies and the managed care entities that are entrusted with Medicaid funds available for the treatment of substance abuse and mental health issues.  They are our partners and all of them face difficult decisions in a time of dwindling resources and unabated need.  The result is that for economic reasons fewer children who may be in need of residential treatment services are referred to programs like ours.  Fewer referrals translate into a serious financial problem for Italian Home.

There is another reason why referrals are lagging.  As I have talked about before in this space there is a trend away from residential services as the intervention of choice for children with special needs.  For both philosophical and, I believe, economic reasons there is a bias toward addressing the needs of even the most troubled children and families in their communities and in their homes.

To address the financial impact of lower utilization of existing residential services and to respond to the changes in the child welfare field we have been developing community-based services.  It has been an unexpectedly difficult challenge to move from the design phase to implementation.  We anticipated the problems a start-up usually presents but were caught off-guard by what I can only describe as an identity crisis.

For just about all of the past ninety years our identity as an institution has been based on serving kids in crisis.  But we have always done it away from the origin of the problem.  We have described ourselves or been described as a safe haven or home of last resort.  The kids we served have been removed from a crisis situation, brought to us and we help them recover and develop skills to move successfully into the future.  Because we have always emphasized working with children and families together with a commitment to reintegration at the earliest possible time I assumed our skills were very much transferable to community-based work.  I think that assumption is correct but I underestimated the extent to which this shift required us to see ourselves and our work in a very different light.

Despite the challenges of the times I think our future remains bright.  We will continue our residential work on a somewhat reduced basis.  At the same time we will develop, adjust and polish the skills necessary to make us equally effective in serving children and families in crisis in their own homes and communities.  In a time when confidence is in short supply I know we will succeed.  The extraordinary commitment of our staff and the equally extraordinary loyalty of our many supporters make me confident about the future.

Christopher Small
Executive Director