A Safe Place For Boys And Girls

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south ms children’s shelter

A SAFE PLACE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Shelter offers safety and hope for children in need

W TEXT BY ROYCE ARMSTRONG

With tears streaming down her bruised and battered cheeks, Amanda (fictional name) tentatively stepped through the doorway of the Hattiesburg fire station with the bright yellow and black “Safe Place” sign outside. She looked around, her fear evident. Firefighters gathered around the girl, attempting to calm her. After determining that the child had apparently been beaten at home and was attempting to run away, firefighters made a quick call to the South Mississippi Childrens Center. The call is one of dozens that the South Mississippi Childrens Center receives each year. “We try to counsel them on the phone and we try to provide counseling for the family,” said Tammy Miller, the regional director for the Mississippi Childrens Home. “We do not just bring the child into the center without talking to the parents. We contact the parents right away and let them know who we are and what we do and ask for permission for the child to come and stay with us while we try to unravel what is going on.” The South Mississippi Childrens Center is an emergency shelter division of the Mississippi Childrens Home. The shelter in Hattiesburg is one of only two emergency shelters for runaway and homeless children in Mississippi. The other is in Vicksburg. It is licensed by the state to provide shelter to 12 children at a time. Eight of the beds are used for children that the Department of Human Services has removed from their home. Four of the

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beds are reserved for runaway or homeless children. “A lot of times the teenager is in crisis,” Miller said. “They may have had an argument with somebody that they care about. Usually it is with a family member in the household. When we get the call, we don’t know everything that is going on. That is when our work starts. We try to unravel what is going on in the family and then we work with the family to get the child back home. Our goal is to always help the child go back home. Then we provide follow-up care.” The center serves two distinct populations of boys and girls between the ages of nine and 17. One group is runaway and homeless youngsters. The other is children that the Department of Human Services has removed from the home. “DHS tries to work with the family to keep the child at home,” Miller said. “But, if it is not safe for the child to be at home, that is when they call us. It could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, or it could be neglect and a lack of supervision where the children do not have anyone to see about them. Those are typical situations for kids to come into custody. We are licensed to provide emergency shelter and assessment services.” Once taken into the shelter, the child is comforted and calmed down. Food and clothing are provided along with a safe place to sleep. Both a physical and psychological assessment of the child’s needs are made. Medical and dental care, as necessary, is provided and the child is enrolled in school for the time

that they remain in the shelter. “We get children that have not been in school for a year or more,” Miller said. “That is typical, too. We get kids that have lots of educational needs. The school system has been great. We could not do what we do without the help of the school system. We could not do what we do without the help of the whole community. Everyone works well together.” DHS children remain in the shelter for up to 45 days before being placed in a foster home or returned to members of their birth family. Runaway or homeless children are kept for up to 21 days before being placed in a more permanent home, according to Miller. The Center averages 10 children in residence at any one time and annually serves about 140 children. “We see children with more needs than ever before,” said Miller. “What we are seeing is that the child may come to us with one specific problem. Perhaps they were physically abused. Once they come to us, we begin to unravel all that is going on and we discover other things that have happened to them as well. Perhaps they were also sexually abused. So their needs begin to be more complex.” Miller blames the drug culture for the seriousness of the childrens’ needs. “We see a lot more children whose parents abuse drugs and alcohol,” she said. Not only does the shelter

attempt to help children during their short stay, it also tries to provide more follow-up assistance. “We are trying to help the kids more when they leave us,” she said. “We see the need for more community-based services. Our agency has started more programs where we work with families to try and help keep the kids

in the community. The federal government has stepped in and said that states must try and keep kids in the community, that we can’t just keep putting them into group home facilities.” Yet, while there are a growing number of children with more complex needs, funding to support the center has fallen upon hard times. “My goal is to increase our revenues so we can stay open,” Miller said. “Staying open is a

challenge.” The shelter is funded by a combination of federal and state grants and it is a United Way agency. It also has an advisory board that makes private donations and solicits donations from the community. “All of our funding sources are affected by the economy,” Miller said. “Our grant funding is decreasing. Our costs continue to go up as our revenue is decreasing.” One of the problems, according to Miller, is that the center is invisible to the average citizen that might be inclined to help support it. “Not everyone knows about us because we cannot reveal our location,” she said. “We cannot put a sign out front that says Mississippi Childrens Center because we cannot let the general public know where we are, or who is with us. If we did that, the children might not be safe.” An important community fundraiser is the annual wine tasting and silent auction. This year’s event was held Aug. 15, at the Hattiesburg Train Depot and was dubbed “California Versus the World.” In the meantime, there are 47 Safe Place signs posted across South Mississippi, offering hope for shelter and safety to abused, homeless and runaway children. “Unfortunately as long as there are families that have needs and who are not able to care for their children, there will always be a need for what we do,” Miller said.

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