Home of the Innocents

Program: Home of the Innocents

Program Description:

The Home serves up to 300 children a day and almost 2,200 children a year through its two service divisions. The Childkind Center provides 24-hour emergency response in a residential setting for children, through 17 years of age, who have experienced abuse, abandonment, or neglect and includes specialized programs for pregnant and parenting teens, foster care, aftercare and follow-up services and a variety of in-home therapeutic supports to families at-risk and/or with specialized needs, including autism. The Home's Kosair Charities Pediatric Convalescent Center cares for 46 children who are severely and profoundly disabled, who have medical needs requiring 24-hour skilled care, some dependent on ventilators and feeding tubes, and all are in wheelchairs with limited verbal communication abilities.

Program Long-Term Success:

• Children and youth will stabilize educationally through regular school
  attendance or other educational programming.
• Children in crisis will remain in or be transitioned into healthy, safe
  and secure home settings.
• Youth aging out of foster care will be stably housed and progressing
  toward permanent economic self sufficiency and independence.

Program Short-Term Success:

Children & young people served by Home of the Innocents will have
immediate basic needs met.

Program Success Monitored by:

Measuring program outcomes is an activity to which Home of the Innocents has been fully committed for many years. The agency has repeatedly seen the benefit of this activity in the continual enhancement of the quality and effectiveness of its programming. Each year, the process of measuring and examining the results of program outcomes bring to light new insights and challenges. Key to this process for the Home is its Program Services Committee. This committee of the Board of Directors meets monthly throughout the year to provide oversight and to review results. Each month, staff of a particular program report on the specifics of the program, such as its clients, services, challenges, and successes (outcomes). The Home's commitment is further evidenced by its having created a senior management position responsible for quality improvement. The Vice President of Quality Improvement reports at least quarterly to the Programs Services Committee and works year round to ensure compliance with the standards of the Council on Accreditation.

Program Success Examples:

• The Kosair Charities Pediatric Convalescent Center (KCPCC) was named one of America’s Best Nursing Homes by U.S. News and World Report. The 41 nursing homes honored out of 15,000+ ranked all achieved a perfect five-star rating in each of the federal government's three yardsticks: health inspections, nurse staffing, & quality measures of individual care.
• The KCPCC served 70 children with long-term and respite care, had all of its 46 beds full every day – a 100% occupancy rate – and maintained a lengthy waiting list.
• The emergency and residential programs of the Home's Childkind Center (CKC) had 318 admissions, provided a total of 22,433 days of care, and had an average daily census of 62 children. The average length of stay went up by 23%, from 38 to 47 days (excluding the Pregnant & Parenting Teen program where the increase was almost 50%, up from 154 to 229 days). Combined with its Community Based Services programs, the CKC served 1,882 unduplicated clients.
• The CKC is implementing a new treatment methodology in its residential programs, the Restorative Approach, which is quickly gaining favor around the country and is in the process of becoming recognized as an “Evidence Based Practice.” The Restorative Approach teaches a specific method for implementing attachment-based, trauma-informed care in treatment settings.
• The Home's TLC foster care program currently serves 46 children, has 43 licensed foster homes, and had an incredible adoption rate of 85% last year (national average: 43%, Kentucky average: 36%). TLC's adoption rate has never been below 52%.   
• The Home’s collaboration with the parent advocacy organization, FEAT (Families for Effective Autism Treatment), has dovetailed nicely with the steady expansion of the Autism Services, which served 83 children last year, up from 66 the year before.
• For the fourth year, the Home's KCPCC offered a series of week-long specialized summer camps that benefited 22 children who are medically fragile and/or have autism.
• The Home’s Aftercare Program, which assisted 92 homeless and at-risk young adults and their 104 children, again surpassed national outcome targets set by HUD related to housing, employment and life-skills. At the end of the year, over 92% were appropriately housed in the community and 87% had accomplished or were pursuing appropriate educational goals. The Cornerstone peer support group continues to be the foundation of the Aftercare Program’s success.
• PASS (Parents Acquiring Skills & Strength), the Home's parenting program for at-risk families, helped 125 families (234 total clients). 83% of adult participants who completed one of the eleven sessions of twelve-weekly classes showed progress in 4 or more of the 5 areas assessed, and 78% scored within normal parenting scores in all 5 areas.
• Now in its 4th year, Safe Exchange served 242 children and 306 parents last year, averaging 361 incident-free custody exchanges each month, a 29% increase over the previous year. All these families have a history of domestic violence. Participation in the program keeps children from further victimization.
• The Phase II capital campaign expansion is proceeding swiftly. A groundbreaking was held in 10/2008 and all five buildings have quickly begun to take shape. It is anticipated they will be completed late summer/early fall 2010. This rapid progress is attributable to the project’s use of a new “green” construction technique, Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) construction.
• Funding is still needed to complete Phase II, but 2 recent grants have helped. The Home received a $285,000 Congressionally Directed Investment through the support and advocacy of Congressman John Yarmuth. The WHAS Crusade for Children awarded an incredible $222,135 for the purchase of ventilators and beds for the expansion of the KCPCC in addition to the $1 million they had already committed in support of Phase II.