 From
the Director.....
NATCHEZ
CHILDREN’S HOME SERVICES – NOT JUST RESIDENTIAL ANY MORE!
The Natchez Children’s Home
Services celebrates 190 years of loving children and adapting
to change.
A
group of Christian women gathered in the parlor of
Mrs. Samuel Davis (today’s Cottage Gardens,
located just one block from the today’s Home) on
March 12, 1816 to establish “support of a Charity
School and other benevolent objects.” The Female
Charitable Society’s “primary object shall be to
give instruction to poor children.”
It was
the beginning of today’s Natchez Children’s Home
Services.
Coupled with resolve and vision, those early
founders laid the groundwork for the continuous care
of thousands of orphaned, abandoned, forgotten boys
and girls through a privately funded organization
that has never closed its doors.
Consider these
telling entries into the Home’s minutes:
1816: The first teacher was
hired at a salary of $500 annually
The second child
admitted ran away after one month
1817: Cost of operation was $7
per month per child
1819: Several board meetings
were cancelled due to yellow fever epidemic
1853: Children and all their
belongings, including a cow and mule, relocated from
the
Grounds of
Arlington to six acres of land on North Union
Street
1870s: Reparations were paid to
the Home for occupation of property by Civil War
troops
1928: After numerous name
changes, the organization became Natchez Protestant
Home
1932: During the heart of the
Great Depression, a bank balance of $19 was reported
Total income for the
year was $6,681
1951: Current building
constructed at cost of $126,000
1985: Natchez Protestant Home
becomes Natchez Children’s Home
2001: Original (1951) roof
replaced at cost of slightly over $l00,000
2006: 190 years of history,
changed lives, and God’s blessings are celebrated at
806 North Union Street.
The struggles, blessings, and continuation of the
Home’s legacy are firmly established in the
flexibility and willingness of its board of
directors to adapt to the changing needs of children
in out-of-home care.
So,
what is in store for the Natchez Children’s Home
Services as
it approaches its third century of service?
First,
the Home will continue to serve as a nurturing haven
for children from families ripped apart by substance
abuse, divorce, domestic violence and emotional and
physical neglect. Its license from the Mississippi
Department of Human Services as a residential group
home will allow us to accept children into a family
setting.
With its additional
license as a child placing agency, the Home is
expanding its network of area foster families who
will take children into their homes with supervision
and training provided by the Home’s social work
staff.
The
third service now thriving at 806 North Union Street
is the campus school. Using the A BEKA Christian
school curriculum, each child is certified in the
appropriate grade and works with tutors, aides,
videos, computers, and Mrs. Betty Cade, our masters
level teacher and administrator. The school was
begun in 2004 and brings the Home full circle to its
initial mission in 1816 as a “Charity School.”
An exciting partnership
between Catholic Charities, Inc. and the Natchez
Children’s Home represents a fourth area of
expansion. A pre-school day treatment program,
certified by the Mississippi Department of Mental
Health and staffed by Catholic Charities, will be
located on our campus.
Day treatment will
address three and four-year old youngsters with
behavioral and academic challenges that make them
at-risk for school failure. Children will be
transported, fed, and taught during a structured
five hour program that will operate all year.
Finally, the Natchez
Children’s Home Services will expand individual, group and
family counseling services to its resident children
and their families, as well as participate in family
preservation and therapy for other identified
community groups. Jackie Biggs-Eidt, LCSW, will
oversee these services.
Admirably, the Natchez
Children’s Home Services has a healthy history of changing,
fine-tuning and even re-inventing itself over the
years. I anticipate the continuation of the
following entry into the minutes of 1822 when the
focus of care was to be for “children who have
no father or mother to protect them, no friends to
support them, no monitor to warn of the danger of
vice or teach them the precepts of virtue or the
principles of piety.”
In
today’s world of short sound bites, the 2006 Natchez
Children’s Home is all about . . .
SAVING LIVES, ONE CHILD AT A TIME!
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