As we embark on our 50th year of ministry in 2019, we also would like to reflect back on our previous fiscal year. We watched God continue to bless our family of ministries last year with growth and development across our agency, allowing us to help more children and families than ever before. As you’ll see in our 2018 Donor Impact Report, we could not have done any of this without the incredible support of people like you!
In our Children’s Residential Center (CRC) on the CCHO campus, we focused on further developing our clinical programming from multiple aspects, starting with our day treatment groups. We now have group therapy for each cottage on campus in one block of time, instead of having the groups split up throughout the day. This has shown to lessen the stress for the kids receiving treatment on our campus as well as our staff. Additionally, we have created a group curriculum that is tailored specifically to our program and focuses on various aspects of trauma-focused care.
We also implemented changes that allow our staff to more fully engage our young residents upon intake. Sadly, we have come to realize that some kids are simply not the best fit for our program, regardless of what we offer, so we have been working to more firmly establish procedures to review each residents’ placement in a timely manner to then decide whether he or she will respond well to our program. Furthermore, we have added additional services at the outset of their treatment programming to identify interests, breed connection opportunities and encourage engagement.
We also continue to see growth of all kinds through our Encompass Christian Counseling services, having completed 1,000 counseling sessions in one month for the first time last summer. In addition to our new office at One Center for Leadership in Canton, we expanded services to include school-based partnerships with the Tuslaw and Triway districts. In our equine therapy program at One Heart Stables, we have incorporated a new trauma-focused therapy model, Natural Lifemanship. This model focuses on the exploration of healthy relationships and learning to connect with self and others through interactions with our therapy horses. In a world that struggles with authentic connection, clients are given the opportunity to experience healthy connection in relationships, thus opening doors for emotional healing and trauma processing.
Our Encourage Foster Care ministry saw significant growth as well, with 10 new families joining our network and even more registering for pre-service and on-going training classes. This growth allowed us to add to our staff as we continued expanding into neighboring communities and churches, all with a unified purpose. Finally, we are seeing wonderful development and rich connections with our new mentor program: A Friend in Fostering. While not everyone can take in a foster youth, everyone can help or volunteer.
To see all the numbers and learn more about our previous fiscal year, please check out our 2018 Donor Impact Report.
