The traditional kick-off to summer, Memorial Day weekend brings to mind outdoor family fun – grilling, swimming, camping, boating – you get the picture. And since Saint Francis is all about families, we love the holiday.
The traditional kick-off to summer, Memorial Day weekend brings to mind outdoor family fun – grilling, swimming, camping, boating – you get the picture. And since Saint Francis is all about families, we love the holiday.
Wherever you live, odds are kids are getting out of school for the summer this week or within the next couple. That means, there will soon be lots more activity on the sidewalks, streets, and common areas of our communities.
Mental Health Awareness Month takes place every May, and it’s one of those monthly observances that means a lot to Saint Francis Ministries. Just a couple weeks ago, our clinical services director, Pam Cornwell, discussed the relationship between trauma and mental health and how it affects those in our care.
One of Saint Francis Ministries largest programs is foster care. Last year, we served about 4,200 children and teens in foster and kinship care in four of the six states where we have a presence – Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska. On top of that, we worked with 905 foster/kinship homes to help ensure those young people were properly cared for until they could either reunite with their families or achieve some other type of permanency.
Monday marks the beginning of both Trauma and Mental Health Awareness Month, so this week we explore how trauma and mental illness correlate with each other. Traumatic events are those situations that put you or someone close to you at risk of serious harm or death.
Among the many programs and services Saint Francis Ministries provides, three of our most prominent are foster and kinship care and adoption. This means we must continuously work hard to recruit professional and caring foster care providers.
In 1974 the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) was enacted as a federal measure to address the overwhelming number of children entering the foster care system because of child maltreatment. Yet we continue to have 3.6 million reports of child abuse and neglect annually across the United States.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2nd Corinthians 5:17 It seems utterly natural that Easter should occur in the spring. After all, they both call to mind thoughts of renewal and new life. Those are themes familiar to Saint Francis Ministries as well.
A few months ago, I arrived at Saint Francis from “Corporate America,” having worked in the private sector in everything from small local companies to a Fortune 1000 company. Often, it was like living in a Dilbert cartoon, right down to the pointy-haired boss and the evil HR cat - only not funny. It had never occurred to me that I would work in the non-profit world, let alone with children and families.
“Social worker …. Only because full-time, multi-tasking ninja is not actually a job title.” Most of us at Saint Francis can relate. After all, it’s a job like no other. It takes a special kind of person, one with a big heart, great passion, and vast reservoirs of hope.
