Kids In Crisis, Inc.

Some children enter the SafeHaven for Kids Emergency Shelter Program (ESP) requiring intensive care to begin healing from trauma due to severe family conflict, neglect, abuse, rejection, homelessness, and other adverse events. Others may need a "time-out" until a family crisis becomes stabilized. Other kids require a safe, short-term "home" when families are unable to care for them (e.g., single parent’s hospitalization due to a medical emergency and no close-by competent extended family/friends).

The ESP provides a safe, nurturing, home-like environment, steeped in the principles of positive youth development; i.e. promoting protective factors and resiliency in children, using a strength-based approach. It provides cheerful, comfortable bedrooms and common areas, nutritious food, clean clothes, regular schedules of sleep, school, and play, age-appropriate chores, and consistent, staff trained in a trauma-informed approach to help traumatized kids stabilize and begin to heal.

Some resident children have received little to no basic medical care previously. Some need dental care or eyeglasses or have undiagnosed special needs. Few have received needed individual and family counseling. Shortly after intake, all new residents receive medical and mental health evaluations at the on-site Health Center. The Advanced Practice Nurse, psychologist, and psychiatrist identify and address each child's (often multiple) needs throughout their stays. As necessary, children are referred to local specialists, programs, or hospitals for treatment. Each child receives daily individual and group counseling in the shelter’s therapeutic milieu. Family counseling takes place on site as needed and able to achieve.

The ESP's Educational Services include assessment, development and maintenance of academic profiles, school transition assistance, advocacy for special needs testing and placement, tutoring, vocational assistance, extracurricular opportunities, transportation, and coordination of communication among all stakeholders. Preschoolers receive developmental assessments from local specialists as needed and attend developmental or therapeutic nursery programs based on their individual needs. Enrichment activities abound, and currently include art and pet therapy, yoga, ballroom dance, boxing, gym and outdoor sports, mindfulness/meditation, cultural events, and multi-cultural learning. Older residents perform regular community service. Volunteers visit regularly, providing homework help, specialized programming, and special meals for the kids.

While children are in residence staff work with families to clarify issues, provide and/or refer to family counseling, and connect them to long-term community-based resources, to enable children's safe return and ongoing well being at home. Social Workers educate families about strategies that enabled their kids to achieve progress and success while in residence. They work to guide the small number of children who need alternate placements to environments best suited to their needs.

Aftercare monitors children after discharge with emails, phone calls, and home and school visits, as appropriate, to ensure that they remain safe, continue to receive necessary support services, and help meet newly revealed or emergent needs. Children and families know that SafeHaven for Kids remains available to them any time they need support. Many stay in touch with trusted staff, sometimes for guidance in navigating difficult life situations, and also to proudly report achievements.

Children in crisis often grow up to be adults in crisis. Children who lack appropriate modeling for healthy parenting often continue to perpetuate these cycles with their own children. SafeHaven for Kids helps youth of all socio-economic levels and backgrounds with individualized care, and by connecting their families to critically needed resources. This resonates into the larger community, helping to promote a healthy, productive, engaged citizenry, reduce family and social conflicts and violence, and break generational cycles of mistreatment.

KIC’s Emergency Shelter Program (ESP) is the only children’s shelter in CT that has a fully licensed onsite health clinic. Without it, treatment would only be available by transporting resident children to area hospital emergency rooms, a situation fraught with problems, including a lack of continuity in the medical care received by these kids. The TLC Health Center’s goal is to ensure that all children in the ESP receive immediate and ongoing high quality, comprehensive, consistent medical and mental health care.

Many children arrive at the ESP with pre-existing medical conditions, some of them severe and long-term. Many of the kids’ families lack adequate insurance and have not sought appropriate and necessary care. It is not uncommon for the ESP to serve kids who have had limited basic medical care and who have undiagnosed and neglected disabilities and conditions. KIC’s on-site medical services are essential to children’s ability to stabilize, begin to heal from trauma, and gain optimal growth and development once they leave KIC.

The TLC Health Center is licensed by the CT Dept. of Health. KIC contracts with Family Centers for the TLC’s licensed nurse practitioner (NP). She conducts initial physical exams for each child shortly after intake, identifies undiagnosed and neglected illnesses and conditions, provides routine and preventive care during the child’s stay, (exams, vaccinations, medication), and communicates with and refers to specialists for needs beyond her scope. She compiles complete medical records for each child. The TLC Health Center provides mental health assessments by the consulting psychologist and psychiatrist. They work with the NP and ESP social workers regarding mental health concerns, conduct emergency evaluations and make recommendations and referrals for ongoing mental health care while kids are in shelter and after they leave.

SafeTalk is an assault and bullying prevention program, offered free to area elementary schools, for children in their kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. SafeTalk's core message is that everyone has the right to live "Safe, Strong & Free." It teaches children how to make safe and healthy choices, stand up for themselves and for others, and how to seek help when needed. The presentations are lively, with lots of give and take discussion between the presenters and the children, and role playing to illustrate threats and protective strategies. At the end of each presentation, children have the opportunity to meet with presenters one-on-one to ask questions or just talk. Some children use this to seek help for personal challenges, family struggles and, sometimes, disclose an assault. In this case KIC takes appropriate action to ensure the child's safety. SafeTalk incorporates the curriculum of the Child Assault Prevention Program (CAPP) under the auspices of the International Assault Prevention Center (ICAP).

KIC’s TeenTalk program provides in-school crisis prevention/intervention to students in middle and high schools, and 24/7 wraparound support of KIC's phone and in-person counseling and emergency shelter. The overriding goal is to provide critical individualized support and resources to help students navigate difficult circumstances, avoid reaching crisis points, manage crises during and beyond school hours, achieve academic success, and optimize their chances of achieving safe, productive futures. KIC's trained, experienced, Master's-level TeenTalk mental health counselors work full-time in each school. Every encounter between a student and TeenTalk Counselor (TTC) prevents a potential suicide, self-harm, or violence to others. TeenTalk has two primary objectives: 1) Immediate crisis stabilization; and 2) Strengths and resource building for students' long-term functioning and well-being.

With accessible, individualized support from trusted TTCs, students struggling with anxiety, depression, severe family conflict, peer conflict, academic pressures, financial distress, PTSD, substance use, abuse, neglect, rejection, gender/sexual identity issues, homelessness, immigration concerns, grief, etc., learn coping skills, effective communication, self-advocacy, goal-setting, time management skills, etc. As needed, families are engaged in counseling, including home visits. Students and families know that KIC TTCs can maintain greater confidentiality than school staff. TTCs make referrals for higher level/specialized services to trusted providers, facilitate topic groups to address needs of particular student cohorts, and make classroom/school/community-wide presentations to address current concerns. They collaborate with all levels of school staff and provide professional development/crisis training and insight into needs of the student body.

Lighthouse provides a safe, welcoming, and supportive weekly meeting for LGBTQ teens. Lighthouse’s inclusive and affirming environment fosters healthy relationships, personal development and the evolution of identity. Adult facilitators create a comfortable space that encourages each member to express themselves and share life experiences in a confidential, non-threatening environment. Lighthouse also hosts guest speakers, trips, barbecues, parties, and movie nights -- programming that is often initiated and planned in conjunction with attendees. For LGBTQ teens who do not join gay straight alliance clubs at schools, and choose not to be open about their identities, Lighthouse can become the only place they can be themselves. Many Lighthouse attendees find friends that they socialize with outside of Lighthouse for the first time without fear of being bullied.