Advocates for Bartow's Children, Inc.
Growing Hope out of Hurt
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Advocates for Children was established in 1983 by local community leaders concerned with the lack of resources for abused children. Our organization has strategically expanded to serve Bartow and 10 neighboring counties in Georgia through programs that seek to restore the lives of children and families impacted by child maltreatment. Our mission is to strengthen our community through education, advocacy, and prevention, empowering families to be free from child abuse. Advocates for Children provides ongoing crisis intervention and supportive advocacy services to child abuse victims, homeless youth, non-offending caregivers, and family members. Three of our programs offer emergency services to children in foster care and youth experiencing homelessness: the Flowering Branch Children’s Shelter, RISE Youth Independent Housing, and Safe Place. These residential programs provide a home for children, emergency shelter for homeless youth up to age 24, and rental assistance for young adults.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Flowering Branch Children's Shelter
A residence for children and youth who have been abused, neglected or abandoned. Flowering Branch ensures that our youth receive proper physical and mental health services, addiction counseling, group work that teaches and enhances self esteem, and independent living skill development. Additionally, we work with each child to set goals for their futures, improve academic achievement, and to foster an understanding of making appropriate life choices. Shelter programs include the Jacob’s Ladder Mentoring Program for adult volunteers and the VolunTeen Program where youth serve as peer mentors to our residents.
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)
Highly trained volunteers, under the guidance of professional staff, serve as the eyes and the ears of the Juvenile Court, advising the judge as to what is in the best interest of the child.
Rainbows
Rainbows grief care groups are organized within each of our local public schools. Children who have suffered a loss through death, divorce, abandonment, or incarceration meet in small groups led by qualified adults. Rainbows facilitators navigate the children through the steps of grieving and help them to adopt ways to manage their feelings of pain.
First Steps
Through our First Steps program new mothers receive a post-partum visit from a trained volunteer who provides a packet of information about how to care for her infant, community resources and a 24 hour “warm line” phone number to call if she feels overwhelmed. Volunteers routinely follow up for three months with the mothers and refer them to on-going help if needed.
A Better Way Children's Advocacy Center
• A Better Way Children’s Advocacy Center is a very special place where children come for a very complicated reason: there are allegations that a child has been sexually or severely physically abused. A Better Way is designed to allow a child to report what happened to them only one time, instead of multiple instances, in a home-like setting, reducing any additional trauma from the very system that is intended to protect them. A Better Way uses a comprehensive approach to investigating, prosecuting and treating child abuse and is recognized by its referral sources in the community as the primary responder to reported cases of sexual abuse, and severe physical abuse and neglect, of children.
Hope in Your Home
Hope in Your Home is a home visitation program to reach children and families at risk of experiencing child maltreatment, but who have not yet had it occur and/or are not involved with DFCS child protective services. Confidential referrals to the program come from medical professionals, child care providers and others who are concerned about the risk for maltreatment among some children and families they serve. Trained program staff conduct comprehensive, family-centered home visits to (1) help caregivers build nurturing parenting skills and behaviors, (2) improve the quality of the child’s home environment, and (3) link family members to social, prevention and treatment services as needed.
Safe Place
Safe Place is a national youth outreach program that educates young people about the dangers of running away or trying to resolve difficult, threatening situations on their own. Advocates for Children operates 65 Safe Place sites (62 stationary and 3 mobile). These sites create a network of Safe Place locations — schools, fire stations, libraries, grocery and convenience stores, public transit, YMCAs and other appropriate public buildings – that display the yellow and black diamond-shaped Safe Place sign. These locations extend the doors of Flowering Branch Children’s Shelter throughout the community. Youth can easily access immediate help wherever they are.
RISE Youth Independent Housing Program
RISE serves youth living in homelessness in six of the
eleven counties that Advocates for Children serves
across northwest Georgia. Our program helps youth
between the ages of 18 to 24 years old obtain and
maintain housing, become self-sufficient, and grow into
independent and successful adults. We use both case
management and medium-term assistance to guide
youth through their transition into permanent housing.
By identifying the appropriate housing option and the
supportive services needed for the youth served, our
RISE program ensures that housing is retained, and
homelessness prevented in the long-term.
Where we work
Awards
Established Affiliate Award of Excellence 2011
Georgia CASA
Affiliations & memberships
National CASA 2016
National Safe Place 2016
Prevent Child Abuse America - Member 2016
Association of Fundraising Professionals - Member 2016
External reviews
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of children who received forensic interviews
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
A Better Way Children's Advocacy Center
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of adults served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Caregivers, Families, Parents, Adults
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of active CASA volunteers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Advocates for Children was formed in 1983 by local leaders concerned by the lack of resources for abused and neglected children. Our mission is to strengthen our community through education, advocacy, and prevention, empowering families to be free from child abuse. We provide direct care to children who are victims of abuse and neglect, and offer programming that focuses on the prevention of child abuse and on crucial elements of family wellness. There are no other organizations duplicating our services in Bartow County.
Our most recent strategic plan, adopted in 2020, defines strategic goals, objectives, and initiatives for our organization's focus over four years:
Goal 1: Programs break the cycle of abuse through education.
Goal 2: A new home for programs across the organization.
Goal 3: Diversified revenue to support Advocates for Children.
Goal 4: Inspired, staff, board, and volunteers.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
The action initiatives and their specific goals are accompanied by details including timelines, costs, status of completion, and accountable persons. The plan will guide the organization through 2023 and is reviewed and updated quarterly.
1. Our first goal focuses on programs that prevent the cycle of abuse through education and training. We want to guarantee that our families have the support they need through increased education for caregivers as well as education and support for youth. To this end, we will increase the number of participants in parenting programs, focus on prevention services across the agency, and become trauma-informed across all programs.
2. After 37 years, our organization has outgrown the facilities that it currently operates from. Our second goal seeks to secure the physical space needed to support Advocates' programmatic needs. We will achieve this endeavor through a fully funded capital campaign based on the goal outlined in the feasibility study.
3. As our organization expands its geographic area of service, we want to ensure that we develop relationships with potential stakeholders in the new communities we serve. Our third strategic goal focuses on identifying and securing multiple revenue streams to support our organization's growth. Strategies to accomplish this goal include building relationships with new and current donors and identifying new donors in the counties that we serve.
4. Advocates for Children has the support available to build and retain the staff, board, leadership, and volunteers needed to support organizational growth. Our last strategic goal seeks to cultivate inspired staff, board, and volunteers. We will focus on creating a cohesive agency-wide culture for our organization, and developing a communication plan to engage the community in volunteer opportunities and needs.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
For over 37 years, Advocates has employed evidence-based models and operated programs that are widely recognized as best practices. We have a long history of positive, collaborative relationships with state and social service agencies, and are highly regarded for being good financial stewards. We have extensive experience managing grants, most notably state and federal grants that require monthly reporting and detailed record-keeping, such as ACF Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY), Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF), Victims of Crime Act Assistance (VOCA), and Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV).
Our program directors are highly trained, qualified professionals who hire and manage very capable staff members. Members of Advocates staff at every level have well-defined responsibilities. Everyone is responsible for operations, which is essential for maintaining each of our three physical locations, but program directors have the freedom to manage their programs without focusing on raising funds to support their efforts. We require exceptional record-keeping and donor and volunteer management from all of our staff, and encourage the pursuit of continuing education to continually enhance our mission.
Advocates boasts an engaged Board of Trustees with many active committees and a diverse representation of experiences and expertise.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
The number of children we serve annually steadily increases each year, matched by a desire of our referral agencies and collaborative partners to see us offering more resources that are relieving to their programs. Though capable of the task, there will be challenges associated with this organizational growth, and new sources of funding will be vital for an expanding budget.
In 2020, we achieved national accreditation through the Council on Accreditation (COA), demonstrating best-practice standards in the field of human services. The Board of Trustees continues to drive progress toward our long-term goals, focusing on a future vision for programming and the need for capital that would arise.
In 2021, we launched a capital campaign to raise $4.6 million for program expansion, capacity building and infrastructure. In October 22, with 80% of our fundraising goal met, we held a ground-breaking ceremony and began construction to establish a new central location for prevention and advocacy programs and services.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We share the feedback we received with the people we serve
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Advocates for Bartow's Children, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/01/2024
Mr. Jud McGivaren
RenovationX
Term: 2021 - 2022
Nancy Newman
Emeritus
Jud McGiveran
RenovationX LLC
Chase Jones
Brown & Brown Insurance
Lara Jeanneret
Lara J Designs
Marc Feuerbach
Cartersville School System
Darnice Moss
Gerdau
Samir Patel
Cherokee Circuit District Attorney
Ginger Tyra
Piedmont Hospital
Hannah Hart
Community Volunteer
Barry Justus
Ameris Bank
Glenn Merritt
Raymond James
Patrick Nelson
Bartow County Government
Lora Warner
Warner Trucking
Dierdra Lanier
Summit Grading
Sid Rowser
GA Power
Drew Startup
Meadowdale Baptist Church
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 10/16/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.