Success Starts with the ABCs
For eight-year-old Candyce*, learning how to trust adults was as important as learning how to spell. During her most formative years, she was removed from her home, placed in foster homes and witnessed the gruesome death of her sibling by a relative’s hands.
It would stand to reason that when she arrived at Catholic Charities’ St. Joseph’s Home for Children, she had fallen far behind her peers academically and emotionally.
For vulnerable children like Candyce, education is often the first thing to be neglected when a family experiences difficulties such as poverty, abuse or mental health issues.
Yet the undeniable truth is that education increases a child’s chance for success. That’s why Catholic Charities’ Children’s Services offers holistic, nurturing treatment that focuses on educational, emotional and behavioral needs.
Helping Families Help Children
Because family issues have a deep impact on children, Catholic Charities’ programs, including Northside Child Development Center, support both the child and his or her family.
“Northside is always trying to facilitate the success of children and their families,” said Michele Fallon of the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) at the University of Minnesota, which partners with Northside to help level the educational playing field for children.
“Northside offers responsive care and stability to children and families living in poverty,” said Fallon. “It’s so much more than child care — it’s family care.”
Intent on strengthening the family’s stability, Northside offers family workshops on interviewing skills and resume writing. It also provides one-on-one support to help parents reinforce the social, emotional and academic gains children make during their days at Northside.
Unique Needs, Common Goal
How do programs like St. Joseph’s Home for Children help children cope with their trauma and make academic progress?
The answer is very different for Candyce than it is for her classmate Bobby,* whose autistic tendencies led doctors to say he would never be able to function in public school.
Each child has unique needs, so St. Joe’s staff — including teachers, therapists and youth counselors — collaborate to create tailored treatment plans.
Unlike mainstream classrooms, St. Joe’s school rooms may have seven children with seven different diagnoses requiring seven very different teaching approaches, explained Claire Bergstrom, Minneapolis public school principal at St. Joe’s.
Within each treatment plan, there is one common theme: helping the child learn skills for a stable, independent future.
For Candyce, treatment focused on coping with her traumas. Slowly, her level of trust — and her academic skills — grew. She now lives with her new adoptive parents and attends public school.
Beating the doctor’s predictions, Bobby graduated from St. Joe’s this spring and will enter sixth grade in public school this fall. He is up to speed academically and now has the tools to regulate his emotions and engage socially with his peers.
“We see huge gains with children whose academic setbacks were based on emotional issues,” said Bergstrom. “But it’s not just about a test score. These children can be great assets to society — they just need a place like St. Joe’s to give them a greater chance at a successful future.”
*Name changed for privacy
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