President and CEO, Neighbor To Family Inc.
Mission
Revolutionize foster care by keeping siblings together in one foster home while building healthier families and stronger communities.
Serving Jacksonville
Since July 2010. We have a program office at 1851 Executive Center Drive in Midtown Centre.
Those served
Duval County, 39 children currently under care. The corporate office is in Daytona Beach and Neighbor To Family has offices in eight cities in six states.
Biggest challenge
The biggest challenge is having Florida’s state-funded community-based care agencies be willing to engage the Neighbor To Family Sibling Professional Foster Parent Program — a program that produces lengths of stay in foster care of less than 12 months and that requires the participation of the children’s biological parents.
Biggest satisfaction
Neighbor To Family helps the state and community-based care agencies meet federal mandates of keeping sibling groups together. About 7,000 children and families have benefited from the intensive, positive, life-changing service from highly trained and prepared foster parents and professional staff. Numerous former clients continue to stay in contact to show the progress they continue to make in their family’s lives. It is satisfying to personally observe foster parents, staff and family members working together and see positive changes in children’s behavior. Also satisfying is having states like Georgia making Neighbor To Family services statewide and available to all counties.
Hometown
Long Branch, N.J.
First experience with community service
I was employed in New Jersey as a cottage officer at Jamesburg State Home for Boys, a large boy’s reformatory that was operated like a prison. Young boys there were provided very little of the social and psychological support services that would benefit their development or prepare them to return to their home and community. Their parents received no support or counseling service. This experience was an eye-opener for me about how institutional programs for young people were detrimental and repressive, causing lasting emotional scars. These experiences provided me with knowledge that formulated the foundation of the Neighbor To Family model, which emphasizes intense “wrap-around” services for abused and neglected siblings, keeping them together in one foster home with the goal of returning them to their families as soon as possible, with some assurance that mom and dad have changed their negative or non-supported behavior to using learned skills from working with our foster parents as mentors.
Your job before Neighbor To Family
As president and CEO of Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago, I was able to reform the agency with new youth programs for young people, such as independent living programs where young adults learned to live in apartments, attend college, high school or trade programs and became employed. Earlier, as the Illinois director of the Department of Children and Family Services, I had responsibility for more than 50,000 abused, neglected and abandoned children. There, I learned about big government operations, state and federal legislative processes and bureaucratic inertia with complicating regulations. Also, there was the challenge of having adequate foster homes that were trained or willing to accept certain types of children that necessitated splitting up siblings.
Upcoming events
Saturday: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., recruitment booth at Riverside Arts Market at 715 Riverside Ave. under the canopy of the Fuller Warren Bridge.
We are looking for committed, loving individuals or couples to foster one sibling group in their home with professional 24-hour support. They will receive benefits and a stipend. They must participate in 50 hours of training per year geared to preparing them for children and family behavior.
Contact information
www.neighbortofamily.org
Karen Chrapek at 386-523-1440