Sunday, December 07, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Child Focus aims to assist foster children in Southern Nevada

Agency provides tutors, plans fun events for separated siblings to share together

Foster children, by definition, have suffered many injuries. In addition to being victims of abuse or neglect, they have suffered radical changes in their relationships with parents and siblings. Their senses of self, security and continuity are impaired.

Child Focus is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 2000 to assist foster children in Southern Nevada. "Helping these children in crisis is a major social concern," according to the organization's strategic plan.

More than 60 percent of the state's foster children live in Clark County, according to Child Focus. Of the 2,756 foster children statewide as of mid-2002, more than 1,600 were in Clark County.

Child Focus' founders are Gloria Bernal, a licensed social worker, and Stephanie Holland, a licensed clinical psychologist. The women have worked together in various capacities including at Regina Hall, now closed, which was a residential facility for teen girls who were wards of the state or on probation.

"We wanted to collaborate on (handling) some of the deficiencies of the system," Holland explains.

The group offers academic tutoring for children in foster care, and holds social events so birth siblings who have been separated into different foster homes can periodically reunite and renew their bonds.

The tutoring is designed to help foster children catch up academically. Many are behind, Holland points out, because of developmental delays, attention deficits or emotional problems arising from their prior abuse or neglect, which may have included in utero exposure to drugs.

As a foster child moves from one home to the next, he or she also suffers a lack of continuity in schools, teachers and classmates, which compound academic struggles. More than 50 percent of the children in state foster care have some type of special needs that can affect academic success, Holland notes.

Child Focus has 35 tutors who tutor one hour a week, for 10-week commitments, in local foster homes. The emphasis is on reading skills.

To recruit more tutors, Child Focus will conduct a public orientation at 6 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Sahara West Library, 9600 W. Sahara Ave. The agency does criminal background checks on candidates and then trains them. Eventually it hopes to offer tutoring that spans the entire school year.

Sibling events are crucial for the emotional well-being of children who have suffered together through abuse and neglect. "All children need to feel connected to someone, somehow," Holland says. "When (foster siblings) are separated, it's sometimes felt to be a greater loss than just the biological loss." Caring for each other may have helped them survive the dysfunctional parenting.

But they get split for institutional reasons, such as limited availability of beds or foster homes offering varying levels of intervention for siblings with different needs.

"We want to increase their contact," Holland says. Child Focus is planning a December outing for siblings in foster care to go to a performance of "The Nutcracker" ballet and attend a dessert party.

For the year ending 2003, Holland estimates that Child Focus operated on a $25,000 budget, with about 70 supporters in the form of tutors, board members or other volunteers.

With new accreditation as a United Way agency and a recent private donation of $150,000, Child Focus expects to start planning four sibling events per year, as well as launch a scholarship program for high school seniors who are in foster care, according to Holland.

The agency is planning how to raise $35,000 and meet other requirements to join Camp to Belong, a national organization that puts on summer overnight camps for siblings separated by foster care to spend a week together.

Camp to Belong was founded in Nevada in 1995 by Lynn Price, but the group relocated to Colorado when Price and her family moved there.

In summer 2003, Child Focus paid $1,500 per child to send two sibling pairs to attend a Camp to Belong in Colorado. It also sent a board member to volunteer as a counselor.

Child Focus hopes to become an affiliate and hold a Camp to Belong here in summer 2005, Holland says.