About Crossnore

In 1909, The Children’s Home was opened in Winston-Salem, NC by a group of dedicated United Methodist churches. Just four years later, Dr. Mary Martin Sloop and her husband, Dr. Eustace Sloop, founded The Crossnore School in the rural Appalachian community of Crossnore, NC. These two historic organizations have served children and families for more than 100 years.

In 2016, both organizations began looking to the future. The Children’s Home was providing robust mental health services in the community and had established an infrastructure for billing Medicaid services. The Children’s Home also had a campus of 212 acres in the heart of downtown Winston-Salem, an excellent location for expanding services. The Crossnore School was a small agency in the mountains with a robust residential foster care program. At the same time, The Crossnore School was concerned about broadening service offerings to weather upcoming shifts in child welfare policies. By working together and ultimately merging into one organization in 2017, Crossnore School & Children’s Home was positioned to continue serving children and families by diversifying program offerings across a continuum for children at risk of entering the child welfare system, those already in the system, and those who are aging out of the system.

In 2018, Crossnore opened a one-person office in Hendersonville, North Carolina to respond to the growing need for child welfare and behavioral health services in the area’s rural mountain counties. In that same year, building upon our trauma-focused model of care, Crossnore created the Center for Trauma Resilient Communities (CTRC) to help organizations embed and embody the science of trauma resilience and to cultivate healing ecosystems.

In 2021, the Board of Trustees established a Strategic Plan with one of its goals being to grow the Crossnore brand as the regional leader in high quality, holistic child welfare services. To meet this goal, Crossnore partnered with a marketing consultant in Winston-Salem to update our name, messaging, and branding. In June of 2021, the organization became Crossnore Communities for Children.

In 2In 2024, Crossnore completed a three year comprehensive fundraising campaign. The campaign’s success funded capital updates, program expansion, and everyday essential needs. Crossnore purchased a permanent building to house our growing Hendersonville staff and programs and founded a public charter school, similar to the one on our Avery campus, in Winston-Salem. Additionally, Crossnore was able to expand its Family Preservation services to much of the state, and our innovative Bridging Families© program was adopted as the state’s first and only professional foster parenting model.