BOARDMAN, Ohio -- A foster care and adoption agency that focuses on hard-to-place and at-risk kids could soon be ready to care for as many as 30 children, its executive director predicts.
The Village Network marked its opening today with a ceremonial ribbon cutting at the agency's new office here. The branch is the latest for the agency, which has offices across Ohio and has been operating for more than 65 years.
"We began to meet families here" and "felt that there was a need here in Youngstown for this service and being closer," said James Miller, executive director, who has been with The Village Network for 27 years. The network "serves children who are either needing some type of treatment or their families are unable to care for them," he said. "We work with many children who are significantly troubled in their behavior and in their emotional needs."
Children typically are referred to the network through child welfare agencies or juvenile court, he said. "We believe that we can care for as many as 30 children in the near future," Miller said. The office has "just started" with families, licensing five with 19 more in the process, he reported.
The challenge is often finding families to commit to the network's children, said Denise Holloway, assistant network coordinator. Holloway, who has adoptive siblings, said she has been involved with adoption her entire life.
"We work with many children who have different needs -- different mental health issues, different behavioral issues -- and trying to find people that will just accept children any time of the day, any time of the evening, and just open up their homes to children that are not theirs, it's been a challenge to find the right matches," she remarked. "We want to make great matches for our families and the children that we work with."
"This is considered for us a real profession for a family. It's not traditional foster care where you're looking at someone to volunteer to take children in their home but truly is a profession where you're trained in very specialized ways of parenting and that you really make a tremendous difference in a child's life," Miller said.
Families participating in fostering receive about 70 prior training and at least two hours training per week on an ongoing basis, he said. The median age of the children the offices serves is 10 to 17, Holloway said.