PADUCAH, KY – First Presbyterian Church held their “Winter Warm Up Soup Luncheon” today at the church. Proceeds benefited the Paducah church’s Bellewood independent living ministry

Today’s chilly and rainy weather proved to be the perfect day for soup. In fact, over 200 people enjoyed soups donated by eight of Paducah’s finest restaurants for the luncheon which was held from 11-1pm today at First Presbyterian Church. $5 got you a bowl of soup, bread crackers a drink and dessert. The fabulous homemade desserts were provided by the Presbyterian Women’s group. iSurfPaducah was one of many different groups, office staffs and individuals who came out in support of this worthwhile cause.

”Our goal was 200 people, and we are already past that goal with 30 minutes left to go,” said Karen Story, one of the members of Bellewood’s Advisory Committee. “That puts us well past our total last year and our goal for this year as well.”

Applebee’s, Pasta House Company, Whaler’s Catch, Holman House, Sulli’s Steakhouse, Doe’s, Gold Rush and Artisan Kitchen provided the soups for the luncheon, which is in it’s second year.

Bellewood is a Presbyterian ministry that has been in existence in the 1890’s, and in Paducah since 2007. The purpose of the ministry is to assist with independent living skills for individuals who reach 18 years old and age out of foster care. If they choose to remain in state custody, they are assigned a case manager. This enables them to keep some of their benefits, including paid college tuition, free room and board and an additional stipend. In return they have to have a job, keep their grades up and Bellewood then works with them to keep them on track and do drug testing and things like that.

Currently the church has nine individuals that they work with, but have space for up to 15.

“Many of our kids are ones that weren’t adopted as infants or younger children,” said Story. “They bounced from foster home to foster home or group living and when the turn 18 no one has taught them how to do a budget, or pick a major and choose their college classes and stay on that course. Those are the types of things we do.”

A recent grant award will also enable Bellewood to assist in preventative care.

“With this grant award we can expand our services and work with families so that the kids won’t be pulled from the home and get pulled out of the system,” Story said.

The people of Bellewood and First Presbyterian church wish to thank everyone for coming out and making the luncheon so successful, as well as the restaurants involved. They know that without such generosity it would not have been possible.

iSurf Paducah

Thursday, January 21, 2010

By Eddie Grant

A state grant awarded this week to Bellewood Presbyterian Homes for Children will enable the Bowling Green office to expand its services to households threatened with losing their children to foster care.

The state Department of Community Based Services awarded a $350,000 Intensive In-Home Program grant to the Bowling Green and Paducah offices of Bellewood.

The grant will be used to fund a program in which a therapist and case manager will work intensively with troubled families, offering counseling and other services so that families can prevent having their children removed from their homes.

Kristy Watt, director of western Kentucky operations for Bellewood, said the grant will enable the Bowling Green office to hire five case managers and one therapist, who will spend four months working with up to 10 families altogether in Warren and Barren counties.

“The cases we’ll be working on are cases involving neglect, environmental issues, maybe a lack of parenting skills, occasionally there might be suspicion of alcohol or drug use or domestic violence,” Watt said.

Case managers would spend up to 10 hours each week with families.

This program is far more intensive and allows case managers to spend much more time with the families in their homes.

“We pretty much provide full care to the child. We communicate with therapists and psychiatrists,” said Lada Odobasic, program director for foster care at Bellewood. “What we’re doing is trying to correct anything we see maybe wrong with the picture to reunify the child with the family.

“We want as many kids as possible to return to their biological parents, and we provide anything from individual therapy to family therapy, any counseling, if things go wrong at school, we’ll figure out how to do better … support is a big thing, so we try to provide the best support possible.”

Watt said that whereas case managers in the past have spent about four to six weeks with families, this program will allow them to offer four months of assistance.

“I would compare it very much to sort of a teaching role, retraining, where the case manager will look at whatever issues have been identified and try to find resources that are appropriate for the family, and go in and teach those things, whether that means training the family on household cleanliness, budgeting or age-appropriate discipline techniques,” Watt said.

The first case manager was hired this week for the grant-funded program, and more are soon to follow, according to Watt.

Depending on the success of the program, Bellewood could receive additional funding to keep the in-home program operating for two additional years.

“There’s an initial period during the first 10 days where we will have an assessment of needs and goals individualized for each family,” Watt said. “We want to meet at least 75 percent of those goals, and there are milestones to reach throughout four-month period, which holds us and the family accountable for reaching those milestones.”

Watt said that families struggling to care for their children and prevent them from being removed from the home face more difficulties in the current economic climate.

The intensive in-home program is meant to break the cycle of abuse and neglect in homes and if effective, could save money spent in the future to reverse the outcomes of living in a turbulent household.

“I think this service is huge because it’s a proactive approach to working with families; so many services we provide statewide are just reactive approaches where kids have already been removed,” Watt said. “This could be a huge cost-saver in terms of keeping a family together versus paying to have a kid housed in foster care.”

Bowling Green Daily News

Friday, January 15, 2010

By Justin Story

For the single mother at risk of losing her children to foster care because she lacks the skills to clean a home or cook for her children, help is on the way.

With two $350,000 state grants, nonprofit Bellewood Presbyterian Homes for Children will hire new employees and create a program to lessen the need for state-funded foster homes in western Kentucky, said Kristy Watt, Bellewood’s director of west Kentucky operations.

“This is a proactive program to provide parents with a good role model and the skills to properly care for their children,” Watt said. The key will be if parents have the motivation to change their thinking about how to care for their family.

Bellewood will offer the new program in Paducah and in Bowling Green. The Paducah-based program will hire five case managers and a therapist to serve McCracken, Marshall, Graves and Calloway counties. And it will have Bellewood case managers visit about 60 state-referred families for a few hours a day for four months to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and provide parents help to keep their children.

“The reality is that there are more kids than foster homes,” said Jim Burns, a Bellewood case manager for children in foster care. Burns said the new program is intended to solve the “front end” problems that force children into foster care.

Learning parenting skills such as age-appropriate discipline techniques, proper food storage and the timely washing of dishes can prevent a fractured family, Burns said.

Most of the families referred to Bellewood live below the poverty level, have housing or food problems and may be missing a parent, Watt said. In extreme cases there is suspicion of abuse, neglect and drug use in the family.

Tim Marcum, program manager at Bellewood Presbyterian Homes for Children, reviews a case record from the nonprofit organization’s cabinet of confidential files. Marcum manages the training program for foster care families in Paducah and said his desk is usually buried under papers.

“We are really trying to preserve families in every way possible and help them cope with all kinds of problems,” said Tim Marcum, program manager.

Bellewood leaders hope the state will extend the funding in July, and award $700,000 a year for the next two years, Watts said. Bellewood received two of the five regional grants that the state government awarded.

“There is some pressure, but we are excited,” Watt said. To receive an extension, each Bellewood program family must accomplish 75 percent of its specified goals.

Despite the new funding, Watt said the organization still needs community donations.

“We operate a lot of programs at a loss because they are needed to help children in the area,” Watt said. Bellewood also operates an independent living program to provide homes for teens who are too old to be in the foster-care system.

“Kids are the fastest-growing portion of the homeless population,” Watt said. “Those kids need a place to develop the skills to become contributing citizens.”

The Paducah Sun

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

By Michael De Los Reyes