This month, Children’s Home & Aid launched our newest program model – AKIN: Achieving Permanency through Kinship placement Investing in co-parenting with Natural parents. AKIN strives to bring our Blueprint for Impact to life by evolving and expanding our Caregiver Support Team to work alongside families as they navigate the child welfare system. We believe the most important asset for child and youth well-being is the family and this foundational belief is crucial to ensure we are collaborating with families to help them thrive. We know parents need assistance navigating a complicated fos ..read more

Two of our early childhood services staff recently attended an 11-day intensive leadership and management development training course at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. More than 200 individuals from around the country applied to the prestigious program, with only 80 receiving the honor of attending. Stacy Mirro oversees our home-based and center-based Early Head Start and Head Start programs for the Chicago Metro region and Tiffanny Powell leads home-based programs for families living in central Illinois. Together, they attended the June session to explore strategies for strengthening ..read more

In East St. Louis, more youth between ages 17 – 24 are finding themselves at risk of becoming homeless, and many others already don’t have a safe place to call home, lack a support network, and need access to basic resources. Our youth services in southern Illinois empower young people to transform their trajectories when facing tough situations like these. In FY21, youth services partnered with 114 youth and will soon welcome another family counselor to serve even more.  “Attorneys refer their young clients,” explains Stormy Tovar, Youth Services Supervisor. “When young people have a fir ..read more

On May 27th, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law SB 3853 which provides greater supports and resources to families at risk of entering the child welfare system. We are grateful for the partnership of sponsors Senator Julie Morrison and Representative Terra Costa Howard on SB 3853, now Public Act 102-1029, to create a pilot program for families in the Extended Family Support Program (EFSP) through the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). As part of Children’s Home & Aid’s work to move service delivery upstream towards prevention, the Ahlquist Center for Policy, Pr ..read more

How We’re Supporting Schoolchildren’s Mental Health   May is a time to raise awareness, reduce stigma, share resources, and advocate for policies that support people living with mental illness and their families. This year’s theme of “Together for Mental Health,” has a strong connection to how we approach our work in the community. At Children’s Home & Aid, we embrace trauma-informed, prevention-focused solutions that center on child and family well-being.   You can see these values in action at Schubert Elementary School, a Chicago Public School with 600 students, ages 5-13 ..read more

Building LEGO, reading, playing sports, hide and seek, peekaboo, and even tickling are all examples of activities that foster creativity and closeness. In fact, research shows that playtime stimulates early brain development and improves a child’s communication, vocabulary, and language skills. Play also contributes to school readiness by helping children learn how to problem-solve, manage their emotions, and build empathy and social competence. At Children’s Home & Aid, we believe that parents are their child’s first and most influential teachers, and that fathers have an important role ..read more

It’s hard to believe that it’s already spring––though there is still a chill in the air, the bright sun signifies something new is around the corner. This April, we are once again recognizing a very important cause––Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month. The 2022 theme of “growing a better tomorrow for all children, together” captures the heart of what we all wish to see in this world––a brighter more equitable future for all families and all communities.  Through the incredible partnerships our staff have with families, supporters, and other social service organizations, we are doi ..read more

“Her love, infectious smile, high spirit, humility, and integrity impacted everyone she knew. Never once did Camille doubt our abilities, empowering us to excel and to be the best in all our endeavors and not lose sight of that.” Our agency is deeply saddened by the news of Camille Harmon’s passing on February 22, 2022. From the time Camille first joined our Early Childhood Services team in 2016 as the ERSEA Manager (eligibility, recruitment, selection, enrollment, and attendance), she has been an essential member of the Children’s Home & Aid family. Her commitment to empowering Illinoi ..read more

“Janice is an amazing strategic planner, thought partner, and collaborator across all our agency programs…She is a fantastic example of someone who holds themselves accountable to the work in both the southern region and statewide.” ~ Linda White, Director of Youth Services, Children’s Home & Aid, Southern Region Thirty years of service to Children’s Home & Aid cannot go unnoticed. Today, we congratulate Janice Moenster, our southern region’s Director of Early Childhood Services, for recently reaching this amazing milestone and thank her for her many contributions as a leader, cowork ..read more

I’m coming to you a bit earlier this week because I’m excited to share some real ground- breaking work going on at Children’s Home & Aid.  I want to do this by returning to our values – our SCOPE. First, a bit of a recap. In the fall, I introduced the first two values of our SCOPE—Strong Families, Community; Opportunity; Partnership and Equity—anchoring our strategic plan. I shared the story of Sixto Cancel—who utilized both his experience in foster care and his connections to family to change child welfare practice—highlighting the power of strong f ..read more