I love this time of year. Warming up in sweaters and scarves and drinking hot cocoa by the fire. We celebrate Christmas at my home, so we spend a lot of time decorating the house with lights and trees and lots and lots of elves! It’s the time of year for many families to connect. After enduring a pandemic, I know many families are excited about this year especially. Seeing families and friends in person will be extra special after many celebrations happened from a distance last year.
At Crossnore, we love to celebrate families reuniting. And not just because of circumstances a pandemic has created. We celebrate families reuniting every year; Families who have overcome hardships, allowing them to reunite with their children and adoptive parents and children who came together to create a new family.
The preservation of home.
In 2021, we celebrated the launch of two programs we offer that have reunification and the preservation of home at their core. Our Homebuilders program serves families who need extra support to work through challenges to keep their family intact. These families could have had their children removed if not for their participation in the Homebuilders program. We are proud to support these families in facing and overcoming their challenges to be able to keep their children home.
The second program we developed and launched is our Bridging Families program. Sometimes children have to leave their parents’ home temporarily while parents work through circumstance to recreate a safe, stable place for them to live. During that time, we provide Bridge Parents to care for children, while we work closely with the family to maintain connection and bonding and build the skills parents need to reunite. We provide the bridge to reunification. It is our honor to work with families and their children to preserve their family unit and reunite them under one roof when the time is right.
We also celebrated reaching our 100th adoption this year! One hundred children and teens were united with their forever family and were able to find their home.
Looking forward to the future.
The state and federal child welfare system continues to be in transformation. Over the next several years, we will continue to see an emphasis on working with families before they reach a crisis circumstance that leads to a child being removed for their home. Sometimes the place that has the most unsafe conditions is often also the most comforting place children know. We want to be able to focus on helping diminish what is unsafe while maintaining the comfort of home.
At Crossnore, we will continue to offer an array of services that allow us to meet a family where they are; whether it be right at the moment of a crisis where we can work with them under their own roof, during a more extended need for a respite while children live with a Crossnore family, or when a child needs to unite with their forever family. Regardless of the outcome for each family, our focus will continue to remain on helping a child find home. And each time a child finds their way home, that’s worth celebrating!
