Wichita -- Within a large, multi-winged grey building on the southwest side, families facing difficult problems get some of what they need. For the most part, however, it is the Wichita community that is the provider.

In the hallway, there's the supply of day-old bakery items donated by local Dillons grocery stores, gradually being distributed to the families by social workers as they make home visits. Sam's Club East bought the parenting educational material for use in classes. Most of the classes are also put on by area organizations, including `Meal Planning and Budgeting' by Sedgwick County Extension Services and `Peer Pressure and Decision Making for Adolescents' by the Stop Violence Coalition with the Department of Corrections. A church, Eastminster Presbyterian, is setting up a resource bank for families, which includes church member volunteers providing everything from mentoring to plumbing help.

The former nursing home on west May Street has been headquarters the last 10 months to one of the first privatization efforts of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) in the field of family services. DCCCA, which already operated an alcohol abuse recovery program for women and their children on the same grounds, opened the Family Preservation Services program last July after winning a bid to provide the services in Sedgwick County. SRS previously operated this program with state employees; four other private contracts were let statewide.

Since opening, DCCCA has provided Family Preservation to over 300 families. While most of the program involves intense, person-to-person work by social workers meeting with troubled families in their home, DCCCA officials have added something new by making the headquarters a home-away-from-home for families.

"Almost all our families are isolated; they don't have natural supports," said Susan Krogmann, program director. "By bringing in community supports, we help families make connection to resources in Wichita. We want this to be a neighborhood center where families who need anything can start here.

"Communities have always held SRS responsible for these families," she said. "Now, with privatization, we want to make sure these are the community's families, not just DCCCA's problem. All of us need to be concerned."

In the program, trained professionals work with families in crisis to help them make the changes necessary to stay intact as a family unit. By definition, Family Preservation is intense work -- families are referred to the program by SRS only if a child or children in the home are in danger of becoming wards of the state because of abuse, neglect, truancy or other problems. The first priority of the program is to do everything possible to make sure the children are safe.

Most of the work is done in the family home, with a social worker, family therapist or counselor with a master's degree and a family support worker with a bachelor's degree teaming up and working many hours with the family on issues that brought on the crisis. Because of the intensity of the work, these teams are limited to 10 families at a time. The intervention normally is short term, lasting about 90 days.

The most recent outcomes report done by Kansas University for SRS shows DCCCA's success rate with families has been excellent, well within the outcomes requirements of the contract. But DCCCA officials say they are not just after good contract requirement evaluations. That's a necessary part of the work. Providing families what they need to regain hope is the goal of the people involved in the program.

"The message we provide is hope," said Krogmann. "I know that sounds corny, but it really is true. When parents feel unable to care for or control their children's behavior, they feel pretty hopeless."

The written words of one DCCCA Family Preservation client show such a return to hope. There were severe problems between Rose Adams and her 16-year-old daughter Kristy when a family preservation treatment team, including social worker Sheila Schroeder, began working with them. Adams said in an interview that the year before she began working with DCCCA, her daughter had run away 18 times.

Rose wrote the following thank you letter to Schroeder after her case closed. It was included in the "DCCCA Dispatch," a newsletter for the family preservation program.

"The words could never express how much you have done for me and a thank you is no where near how I feel. Over the past couple of months I've shared a lot of tears and laughter with you and I truly feel blessed that I have the opportunity to get to know you. Whenever I was going through my down time you were there to bring me up and when I laughed, you were there to laugh with me. You put my faith back into humanity when I thought all hope was gone."

Krogmann, who previously directed a Family Preservation program at Booth for the Salvation Army in Wichita, said the job of family preservation is "not for the faint-hearted." She also said the level of problems facing families referred to the program by SRS has increased. "There are weeks when eight of 10 families are in crisis," she said. "It takes the highest order of social work skill to work in family preservation. You support, you teach, you train and you skills develop, all in the family home."

Besides the center-based program, DCCCA also has added an aftercare program to family preservation. Toward the end of the intense portion of family preservation, families work with DCCCA staff to develop a plan that will help them maintain changes they have made. Aftercare lasts for up to a year.

"They maybe need a worker to stop by once a week to review the week's parenting or school success," Krogmann said. "Or it may be as simple as asking us to verify children's school attendance once a month."

Krogmann said by adopting an aftercare program, they hope that changes made are sustained and there will be less need to reopen cases. Eventually, she hopes to use families who have been in aftercare as part of the treatment team, working as aftercare workers themselves with other families.

Making center-based activities part of family preservation was done for a number of reasons. Activities provide much-needed information to families about life skills and resources; they provide support for families by creating a community of people working together; and they create some good memories for families to build on, Krogmann said.

"The families we serve tend not to have positive memory banks," she said, pointing to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners as times when clients and staff come together for celebrations.

"The camaraderie that develops is so neat...that's what we are striving for, getting that network developed," she said.

Page Last Updated: May 29, 2001