The agency originally operated out of a house in Highland Park, then on a farm in what is now downtown Farmington, and, in 1929, we moved to our campus on Six Mile Road in Redford.
Our agency’s primary focus is children who have been subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse or children who have been severely neglected by their parents.
Our foster home component provides treatment for children in a family atmosphere. Foster Homes serve children from birth through age 17.
Our residential program provides space for 70 children. Our children are involved in an intense treatment program that includes direct therapy with our social workers and other professionals. We also provide occupational and recreational therapy programs. And, of course, our children attend school.
While most of our children attend special education programs, some of our children participate in regular classrooms. We also provide a supplemental education program during the summer months. Many of our children are behind in reading and math skills. We emphasize these subjects in our summer education program.
We teach children skills for independence that include cooking, how to use banks, reading city maps to get around and many of the other skills that parents normally teach their children. We even had an investment course for some of our older youngsters run by a stockbroker.
We provide adoption services to the children who are unable to return to their birth homes. In fact, most of the adoptions we complete now are of children for whom parental rights are terminated by the courts for cause. While we occasionally place infants for adoption, a majority of our placements are for older, special needs children. No fees are charged for adoption.
In March 1993, we began a joint venture with a United Methodist Church in Jackson, MI and a grade school in a disadvantaged neighborhood in the community. The goal of the program is to end a continuing cycle of illiteracy, as a start, by establishing a one-to-one mentoring of “at-risk” elementary students in the second grade.
We train the volunteer mentors. Children meet with their mentors at least once a week at their school. While the focus is on reading, the children and their mentors have branched in to other academic areas such as earth sciences, poetry and prose. More importantly, the relationships between the children and their adult mentors have become very important.
The success of this program led us to establish similar programs at a second elementary school in Jackson and programs in Shaftsburg and Howard City in 2003.
In 1995 through 1998, the agency constructed seven new, 4,500 sq. ft. residences for the children we serve. The old style cottages, while attractive, were not functional for the sexually and physically abused children we serve today. Each cottage has space for 10 children and provides for improved supervision of troubled children while preserving their privacy with individual bedrooms and their safety with fire sprinkler systems.
Major renovations to the campus infrastructure, to existing cottages to make them suitable for current program use, making facilities handicapped accessible and adding new playing fields completed the project. These renovations to our campus position Methodist Children's Home Society to serve children with special needs both today and for generations to come.
Financial support from individuals, churches, organizations, corporations and foundations as well as other donations sustain all programs.
