Lisa attends Partners in Prevention statewide session

Lisa Weaver, the Mid Town Family Resource Center program coordinator attended the annual statewide Partners in Prevention meetings the past two days at Pipestem State Park in southern WV. Lisa really gets a lot out of these sessions, with not only the state leadership, but other county-level projects. The support of Prevent Child Abuse WV has been instrumental in building up the Mid Town Family Resource Center. I am eager to hear a report from Lisa about the sessions. Today was just too busy of a day, with her getting back into the busy daily routine!!!

Parenting Session tonight for parents of teens!

The Mid Town Family Resource Center, spearheaded by Lisa Doyle-Parsons, one of our workers in the Runaway and Homeless Youth program, has arranged for a parenting session tonight at 6 pm here at our storefront, for parents of teens. The presenter is from the Wood Co. Schools Parent Educator Resource Center. We are excited to continue to offer these opportunities to strengthen families as part of our overall mission.

Runaway and Homeless Youth staff visit "partner organization" in Wheeling

Ken and Jim visited our partner organization, Youth Services System, Inc. in Wheeling earlier this week. They were having a monitoring visit from the federal grantors for their Basic Center program and Transitional Living program, and, since we are a sub-grantee for that program, we were involved. Jim and Ken toured Samaritan House (their shelter which is all-boys) and the main facility. They informally met with Annette, the federal project link. They felt this was a valuable experience in helping further our Runaway and Homeless Youth programming.

Alliance Annual conference and training

About 12-15 CHS staff recently attended the 10th annual Alliance for Children conference in Morgantown. I've been fortunate to attend every one of the conferences; and that is a dwindling number who can say that!! It is always good for your perspective about what a strong network we have, and some of the pressing issues for children's services and children's advocacy in the state. The workshops were very diverse, and contributed to a greater understanding of some of the "connections" between our core child welfare focus and services, and many other issues impacting children and families, such as domestic violence, drug endangered children, and the like. This is a solid alliance, and CHS is proud to be a part of it, and provides a lot of leadership to the efforts.

Field trip to Wheeling and Youth Services System, Inc.

Shelley, Ken and I went to visit Youth Services System, Inc. in Wheeling today. We were going to sit in on a conference call in preparation for the Runaway and Homeless Youth monitoring visit next week for YSS's grants. While there, we toured the detention center, the Samaritan House and the new building (The Hazel Atlas Building) that will house the agency's administrative and community services offices. This was a great opportunity to see many aspects of one of our close partners in youth services in the region. Ken will be going back up next week when the monitoring visit is held, to be able to represent our sub-grant transitional living program, and our host home model. The new administrative building for YSS is huge and full of great potential for that organization, and we are hoping to negotiate an office for a "satellite" foster care and adoption office for CHS for the northern panhandle there.

Join Hands Day

A lively group of Saturday morning warriors gathered to do a community service project as part of the national Join Hands Day, where across the country, teams of youth and adults worked on a community service project together. We chose to do a little clean-up/ straighten up at our 1611 Latrobe St. property. A group fixed the broken door on the storage building out back, some side yard trimming and bush clean up went on. We moved a freezer over to the community office and cleaned it up from 5 years of neglect. We brought over a bunch of boxes of craft supplies to the Mid Town Family Resource Center, and took down some blinds and shelves. We carted off some trash. This was a cheery little work crew, who built some good group-ness, and finished up with some pizza. The VISTA's, including April from Greenbriar County, were involved in this as part of some on going awareness raising of the various national days of community service (since we got snowed out of our Martin Luther King day event. Marina, our BSW intern, and her husband, and another student from WV State University pitched in and some Youth Advantage youth and their fearless leader, Travis also pitched in. Staff from our own Runaway and Homeless Youth programs also gamely helped out with the organizing and the work. We hope this gives a little momentum to the work of renovating Latrobe St. for our independent living efforts.

Welcome to two new staff for the after school program of the Mid Town Family Resource Center

Today we welcome two new staff to the after school program, of the Mid Town Family Resource Center. Ashley Way and Jill Mannix are just starting with the program today. We said good by to Andra yesterday, after working her all the school year, she is getting ready to have a baby. The kids help make a quilt for her, and she seemed genuinely touched. Bryanna Browning will be leaving us on May 4 after several stints with us through Youth Advantage program. Bryanna was one of the major catalysts for the young dads group which we began last month.