Tomorrow morning, we will gather at James House for coffee, juice, donuts and more conversation. The chapel service will follow and then lunch will be served in the Holt Activities Center.

Homecoming connects us to people who are a part of our agency’s rich heritage. This is very important stuff. Our former residents remember who we have been and are willing to share their stories. Those stories tell us how the Home’s character, values and mission have been expressed through the years.

The future of the Home and all we will do in Louisiana is fed by who we have been in the past. Homecoming gives us a chance to appreciate who we have been and to value the ministry we and all our former employees have offered children and families. Homecoming allows us to tell our former residents about our current ministries in Louisiana.

It’s easy to think that today and the future are all there is. Now and tomorrow are never the complete picture. The Home has ministered to children for 110 years. There’s a lot of good in our organizational DNA. Homecoming is our opportunity to affirm our rich and faithful past.

Visit LMCH.org and explore the Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home web site!

As you know, each region of Louisiana is unique. You can see it in the ways we enjoy life together. We celebrate the Contraband Days Festival in Calcasieu Parish, the Seafood Festival in St. Tammany Parish, and the Peach Festival in Lincoln Parish. In spite of our regional flavors and fun, we’re all bound together in Louisiana around our common love of an incredibly unique blend of cultures. There is simply no other place like Louisiana!

Because we offer services in Louisiana’s different regions, celebrating and enjoying the regional differences while providing exceptional care for children and families requires that we be bound together around a common way of providing care. With excitement we want to people to say, “there’s no place like the Home!”

I am excited about the new Children and Residential Experiences (CARE) model we are implementing to establish a common way of providing care. As I write this, a large group of our staff are being trained in a week-long introduction to the CARE model. CARE will help us create a common approach for supporting safe environments of care, assist us in developing strong, developmentally appropriate, programming which recognizes that our residents have all been traumatized in significant ways.

Implementing CARE will require three years during which we will be assessing, training, implementing, re-assessing. Our decision to implement CARE is based on our desire to make sure, across Louisiana, that our services are sound, our facilities are excellent, our staff are superb and – consequently – the children and families for whom we care have the best opportunity to be successful.

Aging out of foster care is often a bitter end to a difficult childhood. Foster children typically enter young adulthood with no career experience and little family support.

In contrast, I still have not “aged out” of my biological family’s care system. At 49 I am still strongly connected to my family of origin. When I “launched”, I attended college with the financial support of my parents. When I needed a place to regroup and recoup because life taught me a few difficult lessons, I was able to crash at home and lick my wounds. My father, mother, sister, grandparents, family friends, church family, etc. were on my side as I wandered into adulthood.

Children who age out of foster care have a very different experience of early adulthood. The outcomes of former foster youth during their transition into adulthood are disheartening. One study found that 37% of foster youth aged 17–20 had not completed a high school degree or received a GED. The Child Welfare League of America reports that as many as 36% of foster youth who have aged out of the child welfare system become homeless, 56% become unemployed, and 27% of male former foster youth are jailed.

In addition to our Life Skills Training Center and Transitional Living Program, the Allen Career Center is one of our efforts to help foster care children avoid homelessness, unemployment and prison.

The John H. Allen Vocational Training and Career Center offers youth opportunities to receive cutting-edge training in four areas of concentration: Barbering, NCCER Carpentry, State-issued G.E.D. and NCCER Welding. Highly-certified Career and Technical Educators instruct job readiness classes, computer-aided remediation of core skills (math, reading, grammar), and coordinate an active intern program with community business and industry leaders. These avenues give students opportunities to use their skills in a real workplace which offers more realistic goals for immediate of future employment. Often, teens are able to complete their training as they “age out” of the foster care system and are immediately employed by the construction firms who have partnered with us to serve as internship sites.

Compared to the positive outcomes for our residents who now enter young adulthood with career skills and independent living resources in their tool kits, our Plaque Ceremony tomorrow is a small way to say, “Thank You!”, to a group of individuals who supported the construction and furnishing of the Allen Career Center.

One of the exemplary, comprehensive wraparound efforts, Wraparound Milwaukee, began in 1995. The National Wraparound Initiative began in 2004 when a group of families, youth, providers, researchers, trainers, administrators and others came together to better define the wraparound practice model, compile specific strategies and tools, and share information about how to implement wraparound to achieve positive outcomes for youth and families.

Louisiana’s Coordinated System of Care will create regional wraparound agencies which will provide care planning and case management for families. Wraparound services are the primary component of a “coordinated, community-based, family-driven, and youth-guided system of care” designed to provide prevention and early intervention in family crises.

Wraparound is NOT residential care. In fact, a primary goal of wraparound is to surround a family with the support and resources they need to remain intact. Wraparound is about providing services to children and families in their own homes to keep them home.

For children who will require out of home care, Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services will continue providing intensive residential treatment at Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home in Ruston, at Methodist Children’s Home of Southwest Louisiana in Sulphur, and at Methodist Home for Children of Greater New Orleans in Mandeville. Geographically, these three residential treatment centers are located in the key “corners” of Louisiana’s boot shape. Our facility in Ruston is in north central Louisiana. Our location Sulphur is in the southwest region of Louisiana. Our site in Mandeville provides intensive residential care of the southeast region of Louisiana. But again, residential care is not wraparound.

Wraparound “wraps” home and community-based services around families needing care. Home and community-based services include all the services a family might need to prevent the removal of a child from the family or to support a family experiencing a crisis that might lead to separation. Examples of home and community-based services which we currently provide include our Multisystemic Therapy programs in Shreveport and Monroe and our Family Plus programs in communities across Louisiana.

The Rural Challenge

Louisiana, like many states, does not have all the community-based resources required to provide care for families. Much of Louisiana is rural – approximately 80% of the state qualifies as rural. Unlike Wraparound Milwaukee with about a million people within 20 minutes of each other, Louisiana’s Coordinated System of Care faces what I’ll call the “Rural Challenge”. Milwaukee County has 3,926 people per square mile. Louisiana, which is creating a statewide system of care has 4.5 million people – only 105 people per square mile. If Jefferson Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish are removed from the calculations, Louisiana’s population density is 87 people per square mile. Louisiana’s rural areas have about 2% of the people per square mile that Milwaukee County contains. (The population data was provided by http://quickfacts.census.gov).

The Physics of Time

The “Rural Challenge” is about the distance between providers and the families who need services. If you remember high school physics, you’ll recall a formula related to distance, time and speed: Time = Distance/Velocity.

Here’s why the Rural Challenge is related to physics. While there are unique variables specific to each location, on average a therapist in rural Louisiana will travel 45 times farther than a therapist in a densely populated area like Milwaukee County. Travel time is time away from families. An MST therapist in Milwaukee may easily visit six different families in a day who live within 20 minutes of each other. In rural Louisiana, because of distances traveled, an therapist may be fortunate to visit two families in a day who are separated by entire parishes.

This simple example shows why an early focus of CSoC must be on expanding the availability of home and community-based services across rural Louisiana. The need is obvious and great. Fortunately, some of the changes already made by the Department of Health and Hospitals will ease this expansion. However, it will take time to build the capacity needed by Louisiana’s children and families.

In spite of the shortage, there ARE resources available in Louisiana for children and families. We offer an array of counseling programs including our Family Counseling Center in Ruston, Family Plus offices in locations across Louisiana and our Multisystemic Therapy programs in Monroe and Shreveport.

Of course, there are others, too, who provide support to children and families. One of these is the network of 10 Families Helping Families (FHF) centers in Louisiana.

Families Helping Families are nonprofit centers which work to help families find the services they need in their community. FHF provides information and referrals, education and training and peer-to-peer support.

There is a Families Helping Families office in each region of Louisiana. Here, by region, is the contact information for the Families Helping Families centers in Louisiana:

Families Helping Families of Southeast Louisiana, Inc.
Parishes: Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard
Phone: 1-877-243-7352
Email: info@fhfsela.org
Website: www.fhfsela.org

Families Helping Families of Greater Baton Rouge, Inc.
Parishes: East and West Baton Rouge, East and West Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, and Ascension
1-866-216-7474
Email: info@fhfgbr.org
Website: www.fhfgbr.org

Bayou Land Families Helping Families, Inc.
Parishes: Assumption, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. James, St. John, St. Mary, Terrebonne
1-800-331-5570
Email: blfhf@bellsouth.net
Website: www.blfhf.org

Families Helping Families of Acadiana, Inc.
Parishes: Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, and Vermillion
1-800-378-9854
Email: fhfacad@cox-internet.com
Website: www.fhfacadiana.com

Families Helping Families of Southwest Louisiana, Inc.
Parishes: Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, and Jeff Davis
1-800-894-6558
Email: info@fhfswla.org
Website: www.fhfswla.org

Families Helping Families at the Crossroads of La., Inc.
Parishes: Avoyelles, Concordia, Catahoula, Grant, LaSalle, Rapides, Vernon and Winn
1-800-259-7200
Email: fhfxroads@aol.com
Website: www.familieshelpingfamilies.net

Families Helping Families of Region VII, Inc.
Parishes: Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Claiborne, Desoto, Lincoln, Red River, Natchitoches, Sabine, and Webster
1-877-226-4541
Email: info@fhfregion7.com
Website: www.fhfregion7.com

Families Helping Families of Northeast Louisiana, Inc.
Parishes: Caldwell, East Carroll, Franklin, Jackson, Lincoln, Madison, Morehouse, Ouachita, Richland, Tensas, Union, and West Carroll
1-888-300-1320
Email: info@fhfnela.org
Website: www.fhfnela.org

Northshore Families Helping Families, Inc.
Parishes: Livingston, St. Helena, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Washington
1-800-383-8700
Email: sestewartnfhf@bellsouth.net
Website: www.fhfnorthshore.org

Families Helping Families of Jefferson, Inc.
Serves Jefferson Parish
1-800-766-7736
Email: info@fhfjefferson.org
Website: www.fhfjefferson.org

Two things require us to change our licenses: the size of our campuses and the significant emotional and behavioral needs of our children. It’s about the number of children and their severe needs. That combination requires each of our campuses to become licensed under the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals’ Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) regulations.

I know the word “psychiatric” on the front of “residential treatment facility” gives some people pause. In this case, it should not. What Louisiana is doing by creating a Coordinated System of Care for children is a good thing. But like all new things, it generates questions.

One of the common questions is this: Are the Methodist children’s homes in Louisiana becoming psychiatric hospitals?

The answer is, No.

Our children’s homes are NOT becoming psychiatric hospitals. We will continue providing residential services to children.

Another frequent question is, “will you change your names?”

Again, the answer is, No.

We are not changing our names. We will still be Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home in Ruston, Methodist Home for Children of Greater New Orleans in Mandeville and Methodist Children’s Home of Southwest Louisiana in Sulphur. We are who we are.

What I like about these new licensing requirements is that they will help us increase the intensity of our treatment programs so we can better meet the needs of our children. We have always sought to provide care for the neediest children in Louisiana. We care for children and adolescents whose needs and behaviors challenge our abilities.

This dynamic tension between what children need and what we have done to meet their needs has enhanced our expertise through the years. Muscles grow when they are flexed.

Simply stated, under these new licensing standards we will add additional staff and treatment resources to meet the increasing needs of the children for whom we care. These standards will help us flex our ministry muscles and, once again, we will enhance our residential services to children.

If you wish to learn more about Louisiana’s Coordinated System of Care for children, information is available online at: About the Coordinated System of Care.