President’s Message
This past year has been both exciting and interesting for all of our programs. We continue to reflect our strengths in the delivery of our service to children and families.
In October, we were reaccredited by the Council on Accreditation for Families and Children (COA), a national accrediting body based in New York City. Because we scored over 95 percent in achieving “best practice” on over 800 standards, COA was able to expedite our approval. Their standards include governance, financial, personnel, and service delivery. All of our programs and services in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and West Virginia were successfully accredited. In the fall of 2007, the United Methodist Association will visit us to reaccredit our Christian presence, social justice, and spiritual life activities according to the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church. This is part of our commitment to recognize and continue our heritage according to the Social Principles.
The Board of Child Care’s programs continue to evolve. Our residential program now is licensed for 108 children. We have added a group home in Hagerstown for adolescent boys. This occurred as a result of seeing our census drop in shelter care, a trend occurring across the State of Maryland. Our adoption program continues to conduct over 30 home studies and placed over a dozen children in loving homes. Both Tide Point and the District of Columbia day care and early education programs have dramatically increased enrollments in 2006-2007. We continue to offer mental health services in our Pasadena office to over 140 clients on a regular basis. Our District of Columbia office continues to serve over 60 children in foster care and is rated as the highest performing program according to benchmarks and outcomes established by government standards. The Maryland Treatment Foster Care program has increased its census. Our West Virginia program operates at 95 percent occupancy and has done well on its license audits.
Pursuit of excellence and quality will continue to be our mantra. We have close to 500 committed and dedicated staff who place children first. And, we continue to have many loyal customers and supporters that allow us to do more. This past year, successes for our youth came into focus as we graduated 25 children in all our programs. Many of them are going on to two- and four-year colleges, vocational schools, and some into the work world. The is truly an awesome number when only one out of seven children, or an average of only 14 percent of foster children graduate from high school.
Thank you to all who make this happen.
Grace and Peace,
Thomas L. Curcio
President and CEO
