Page 8 - AR 2019 Web

R I S E

E E MP O W E R ME N T

EMPOWERMENT: The Power to Create Change.

What differentiates Family & Children Services is our resilience, forced to leave due to incidents of aggression toward his family. The
extending ourselves when others give up. When times are difficult, girls and their mom had recently moved into a small apartment when
we empower our staff to come up with creative solutions to challenging Mom landed a new job.
circumstances. When COVID-19 arrived in our community, we found Bader had heard variations of the same story many times before.
innovative ways to continue our work and stay in contact with our Typically working on eight to nine cases at a time, she has worked
clients—because a crisis never takes a day off. with families coping with addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse,

Whether in person or through various forms of tele-communications, domestic violence, runaways, developmental issues, and more.
we continue to build healing connections with our clients. Kylie “As it turned out, my young client opened up more on the phone than
Bader, a clinically trained therapist working in our Family and in person,” Bader said. “She told me how an older cousin had sexually
Community Treatment Program (FACT), is an example of someone abused her and her sister, and how angry she was, feeling alone
empowered to work through the challenges of COVID-19 to reach because her mother was juggling a new job leaving her with little
out to those who need her help the most.

“I met the younger of the two sisters first,” Bader said. “She was energy or time for her at the end of the day. She didn’t know how to
having trouble in school and at home just when things shut down handle her feelings, and she was feeling abandoned.”
in our community due to the pandemic. I switched our in-person While Bader felt that she had less control over a situation by using
therapy sessions to teletherapy, only to find out that the girls’ family teletherapy rather than meeting with her clients in person, the teen
had no internet access, no smart phones.” took to it almost instantly. Talking into a phone seemed to give her a
Bader turned to HANDLE WITH CARE for help. The donor-based sense of just-enough distance.
program provides emergency funds in these situations. Bader was “I am not able to make observations about my client’s surroundings
able to buy smart phones for the sisters, and with that— their or other family interactions, so I have to work harder to ask the right
teletherapy was underway.
questions,” Bader said.
Connecting through her new phone, the teen began to share her Through her questions Bader learned that the older sister had
story. She and her sister were living with a single mom. Dad was expressed suicidal thoughts. “Over Zoom I was able to assess her

8