With your continued generous support, in 2024, the Children’s Hope Initiative (CHI) will be able to help Somerset County’s abused, neglected, and traumatized youth in the following ways:
Continue these programs at spending levels provided in 2023:
- CASA Tutoring – at-home tutoring for children in out-of-home placements ($7,500)
- Provide paid mentors for up to thirty (30) elementary and middle school children through Middle Earth Lunchtime Mentoring ($10,000)
- Serve up to nine (9) at-risk high school students in the Promise Plus Program offered by Middle Earth ($10,000)
- Serve up to eight (8) 18-21-year-old young adults who have “aged out” of the child welfare system through the Middle Earth Visions Plus program ($9,000)
- Provide “Fun Trips” for up to 100 abused and neglected children to a ropes adventure course, Dorney Park/Great Adventure, and/or Schaffer Farm ($5,000)
- Cut waiting time in half for children to begin treatment at Family & Community Services in Bound Brook ($4,000)
- Immigrant Children groups at Family and Community Services ($2,000)
- Paid Mentoring for five (5) young people under the care of the Somerset County Family Crisis Intervention Unit first using unexpended funds from 2023 ($10,000)
- Mentoring seven (7) children in out-of-home placements through the CASA Fostering Futures Program first using unexpended funds from 2023 ($9,500)
- Grant Visions and Pathways $5,000 to continue behavioral and wellness programs and year-end events.
And meet the following needs we identified during our 2023 needs assessment:
- Adjunctive art and animal therapies for Middle Earth and Visions and Pathways.
- Train the trainer program for Youth Serving Organizations (YSO’s) to help children and young people they serve deal with their losses and the resulting grief and changed behaviors.
- Food insecurity as identified by the Department of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) and CASA, both who work solely with abused and neglected children to help ensure that a child is not separated from the family simply because of lack of food.
- Re-start the Positive Parenting Program we supported years ago through the Family Support Organization that has ceased to function.
- Sponsor a one-day training to help YSO’s work with young people manifesting aggressive behaviors in a trauma informed way.