Make Room!

For many of us, our bedrooms are our personal havens. We dress them up to reflect our own personalities. We hang our favorite pictures, decorate with our favorite colors, and surround ourselves with comforting knick-knacks and personal mementos.

Youth in foster care rarely have this opportunity to create a personal space of their own. At CCS, we focus on achieving permanency for our youth, but the sad fact is that outside of our agency, foster youth are passed around from family to family, rarely staying in one home long enough to truly settle down.

Jodi lives in one of our Enhanced Homes for foster youth. These homes give our foster youth the chance to have a permanent personal space of their own where they can feel safe & secure. This past week, two of our board members surprised Jodi with gifts purchased from her wish list, including a stereo, toy horses, and the game Connect Four! Afterwards, they took Jodi out shopping for items and decor with which to decorate her bedroom! Board members Twilynn and Dionne had the best time shopping with Jodi, selecting comforters, bed linen, mirrors, paint, wooden letters to spell out her name, curtains & accessories, bean bag chairs, lamps, and most importantly, CDs for her new stereo!

Twilynn writes:

“We got back, set up that stereo, opened those CDs and got to work. We watched a room that was clean and safe, providing a place to sleep and get homework completed transform into as Toni put it ‘My room is beautiful and peaceful..I am at peace now!’ It transformed into something beautiful. Something she could call her own. It was totally reflective of Toni’s personality, style, and warmth. We high-fived, gave hugs and cheered at the outcome, and most importantly we did it together!”

Jodi was so happy with the results, and our board members were so touched. This special day impacted Jodi’s foster dad, too, who was so pleased to see Jodi excited about her new room. He was even bestowed a gift from all three shoppers at the end of the day. Twilynn and Dionne have now been invited to Jodi’s graduation, and to join them for the holidays!

“Yep, we became a part of the family on Sunday..and I got to tell ya…it feels so good! We are a part of something wonderful at CCS, and I am so happy to share it with all of you!”

If you would like to be involved in transforming the lives of our foster children, whether by volunteering or making a contribution, visit http://www.ccsgeorgia.org or call (770)469-6226. Become a part of our family and make a difference!

*names have been changed to protect the identify of youth in foster care

2016 Spring Picnic

It was a gorgeous spring day. A day not unlike what you’d imagine as the setting in a storybook, the temperature neither cool nor warm and the sun shining high in the sky, gently eclipsed by the occasional string of white, puffy clouds. The hamburgers sizzled on the grill, emanating a mouth-watering aroma in smoky tendrils that surrounded the gathered crowd of friendly faces, producing bright smiles and eager stomachs.

What a fantastic day it was! In total, there were close to 270 attendees at the CCS spring picnic this year, and that includes the most volunteers we’ve ever had for a spring picnic! We are so grateful to all of those who came out to help or donated to this event. Tom Vooris, President of ChoicesToYou donated hundreds of hamburgers, cheese, hotdogs, and buns and worked that grill like a Master Griller.

We would also like to thank the AKA Lithonia – Tau Pi Omega Chapter for their assistance. Their members are such incredible, warm-hearted individuals and we appreciate them so much.

AKA Lithonia

AKA Lithonia

This year, CCS was proud to host Chopper, the Gwinnett Braves’ mascot! The kids had a blast meeting, playing, and dancing with Chopper!

The kids also got to enjoy face-painting courtesy of the splendid talents of Cathy’s Creative Faces and Body Art joined by Bert, and balloon shapes twisted by our guest clown, Don’t Kno.

Bert and Cathy are so talented!

Don’t Kno twisting a balloon animal

Cathy’s Creative Faces and Body Art

Our springtime activities also included corn hole, a wet sponge relay, and a sack race! All of which was fueled by the sweet, sweet sugary treats that were donated for the Cake Walk. Thanks to all who contributed!

The park was bright with smiles on Saturday. On the faces of our foster children, our adults with developmental disabilities, our volunteers, and our staff members and guests. We made lasting memories and received wonderful feedback from so many.

Keith looks too cool in these shades.

Christy’s smile brightens everyone’s day

Thanks again to all of those who made this picnic possible! As always, our event coordinator, Paula Fine, put so much effort into making this picnic a success! Zoe and Austin, long-time volunteers, Joe Freeman, Doug, Carol Moses who donated her delicious homemade chocolates, and our DJ, Keith Jr. Wilder with Positive Impact International, and all of our staff, board members, and volunteers: Thank you so much for your time and dedication!
Photography by Milo Wesley with contributions from Lori D. Brickman

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Camp Will-A-Way

This past Saturday, our DD adults and staff ventured out to Camp Will-A-Way in Fort Yargo State Park. The day was filled with such a great variety of outdoor activities for everyone to enjoy: archery, zip-lining, fishing, boating, dancing, and a bonfire!

In the morning, we split into three groups: Team Dragon, Team Nighthawk, and Team Wonder. Everyone had time to do every activity on the schedule. Though the idea of zip-lining was intimidating for some, Larry showed no fear when he volunteered to go first, and even inspired others in his team to face their fears, which, in fact, were unfounded because each of them had a blast! The smile on Joel’s face as he slowed to a stop was proof of that!

Over at the archery station, the camp Will-A-Way staff made the sport of archery accessible and fun for all! Those who had difficulty holding the bow didn’t have to sit out on this one, because the camp staff rigged a special way to shoot while sitting or kneeling. Those targets were full of arrows and the station full of victorious cheers!

We all had time to wind down and enjoy the great outdoors with an hour of fishing on the pier, where many fish were caught, and out on the lake itself in pedal boats.

We all had so much fun and the camp staff said we were one of the best groups they’ve ever worked with! Our adults didn’t want to leave at the end of the day, but perhaps next year we’ll be able to stay overnight in their cabins!

Thanks so much to the staff at Camp Twin Lakes and Will-A-Way and to our CCS family who did an amazing job of making sure this adventure was a success!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sneakers4Funds!

CREATIVE COMMUNITY SERVICES Needs Your Clean Sneakers!     

Fundraiser begins April 15!

WHAT:

The public is invited to participate in a sneaker/athletic shoe collection drive to raise funds for Creative Community Services. Donations of used, gently worn (good condition) and new sneakers will be accepted. The amount of money raised is determined by the number of shoes collected.

All donated athletic shoes will be redistributed to microenterprise partners through Funds2Orgs, a for profit social enterprise, and used in developing nations for impoverished people to start their own businesses.

WHEN:

April 15^th –June 1^st

HOW:                       

Please have a large drop box placed in your company/facility and we will send you the rubber bands to hold the pairs together.  We will arrange a pickup time.

WHERE:

If anyone needs to drop off sneakers at our facility:

Creative Community Services
4487 Park Drive Suite A
Norcross, GA 30093

DETAILS:

In the US alone, approximately 630 million pairs of shoes are thrown away per year. The materials used to manufacture a pair of shoes are created from chemical compounds that will create health hazards if left to disintegrate openly or in landfills. By donating your gently worn used and new sneakers to Creative Community Services, they are given a second chance to make a difference in the world.

About Creative Community Services:

www.ccsgeorgia.org

CCS improves the quality of life for children, teens and adults with developmental disabilities and mental health needs, and their families, by providing direct services and community based support throughout the state of Georgia.

CONTACT:

Paula Fine

Creative Community Services

Phone: 770-469-6226

Fax: 770-469-6210

Email: pfine@ccsgeorgia.org

A Community Coming Together For One Purpose:

Imagine a world where the unimaginable is a normality and the struggle of life is a daily reality.  Where you have no place to call home and you don’t feel privileged to your own birth family.  Where it’s hard because you might float around every year to different homes, and you simply feel like you’re an outsider.  This is the story that holds true for so many foster youth and adults with developmental disabilities around the world.  With the alarmingly high number of foster youth and adults with mental, developmental, emotional, learning, and physical disabilities; as well as toxic home environments, abuse and neglect, these individuals struggle with life altering challenges.  The goal for the individuals we serve is to live healthy, happy lives and to become self-sufficient, contributing members of their community. There are subsets of these individuals who cannot reach these goals with ease without adequate support.

The children in foster care and the adults with developmental disabilities that we serve are just like anyone else you may know, but with one difference, they have all suffered some type of trauma and or challenge through no fault of their own.  They have the same needs, dreams, and unique potential like all of us and want the same opportunities that we all equally deserve to reach their full potential.

This is why, the existence of CCS and the support of our community partners who share our vision is so vitally important to the future of those we serve.  At CCS, our mission is to improve the quality of life for children, teens and adults with developmental disabilities and mental health needs, and their families, by providing direct services and community-based support throughout the state of Georgia.  Yet, there is still much to be done to ensure the health and well-being of the individuals we serve.  It’s true, the old homage “it takes a village to raise a child”, and we could not achieve as much as we do without the support of our community partners and volunteers.

We want to extend our deepest gratitude to all our individual donors as well as recognize the following companies for their continued commitment and support of CCS.  A heartfelt thank you for your unwavering dedication to our most vulnerable children, adults, and families:

Aerotek	http://www.aerotek.com
AKA Sorority	http://www.aka1908.com
Cisco	http://www.cisco.com
Coldwell Banker Residential Cares Foundation	http://www.coldwellbanker.com
Comcast	http://www.m.xfinity.com
Comverge	http://www.comverge.com
Fifth Third Bank	http://www.53.com
Grayson United Methodist Church	http://www.graysonumc.org
Hodges Mace Benefits Group	http://www.hodgesmace.com
Hungry Howies	http://www.hungryhowies.com
Iberia Bank	http://www.iberiabank.com
Ivy Creek Church	http://www.ivycreek.org
Mitsubishi Electric	http://www.mitsubishielectric.com
Rose Paving Company	http://www.rosepaving.com
St. Benedicts Catholic Church	http://www.stbenedict.net

  “Giving Thanks”

Comcast Employees Sorting Christmas Gifts

                           Mitsubishi Employees “Making Dreams Come True”

CCS Christmas Party with the Executive Director & Family

 

 

DD Adult Program Thanksgiving Lucheon

This past Saturday was our annual DD Adult Program Thanksgiving Luncheon. It was a great success and turnout for both individuals and their staff member.  Paula Fine, our Special Events Coordinator and guest blogger for today:

CCS wants to thank Iberia Bank (https://www.iberiabank.com) for donating the turkey & ham from Honey Baked Ham for the DD Adult Program Thanksgiving Luncheon.

We also want to thank our servers from Mitsubishi Electric (http://www.mitsubishielectric.com), a great company that has supported CCS on several occasions.  Please join us for more holiday celebrations to come!!!

 

CCS Halloween

This past Saturday was our annual Halloween party. It was a great success and here to tell you all about it Megan Nelson, our DD Program Co-Director and guest blogger for today:

Halloween at CCS had a great turnout for both individuals and their staff alike! Accompanying great music and food, everyone enjoyed spooktacular games including ghost bowling, witch hat ring toss, and the ghostly bean bag toss. Our individuals donned a variety of costumes ranging from scary, to heroic, to comedic. Every costume was a winner on this night, as everyone enjoyed prizes for their participation. The evening wound down with dancing and crafts of foam pumpkins, ghosts, and witch heads, and making popcorn witch hands. Tune in again next time when CCS hosts a Thanksgiving Luncheon!

LONA Gallery Event

A few weeks ago the CCS team put on an amazing event at the LONA Gallery in Lawrenceville, GA. About seventy guests gathered to learn about our vision and the programs we’ve created to see that vision come to fruition. It was a great night of awareness, connection, food, and general merriment!

We wouldn’t have been able to pull off this event without the generosity of Carolyn Wright and Sylvia Culberson, owners of the LONA Gallery, who donated their lovely venue for the event. We’d also like to thank La Cazuela, McCray’s, Special Kneads Bakery, and Karren Amidon for donating food, desserts, and wine respectively.

In the words of one attendee, “It was a great experience to attend the event and meet a bunch of good people so devoted to such a great cause.” Aw, shucks, we’re glad you enjoyed it!

Please enjoy the following photos, courtesy of Clear Craft Photography.

Anne carefully arranging the flowers.

Goody bags for all our guests.

The food was scrumptious! Big thanks to McCray’s for the chip bar.

Special Kneads Bakery donated the most spectacular cupcakes. They tasted even better than they looked!

Guests arriving.

Sally Buchanan, CEO of CCS, and Mayor Judy Johnson address the crowd.

What a lovely venue! Our guests enjoying the words of Sally Buchanan and Mayor Judy Johnson.

Carolyn and Sylvia, owners of the LONA Gallery, were presented with an art piece in recognition of their generosity in donating the space for the event. Art work done by CCS employee Alison Ganse.

The CCS team who made the event happen. A job well done, everyone!

Every Child Deserves a Family

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you probably saw our posts seeking items to furnish an apartment for a foster youth named Jeremy*. 18 year-old Jeremy is one of the first foster youth to enter a new kind of specialized foster home program CCS has developed. Jeremy is polite, helpful, and smart and for the past few years, he has been living in a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility. While this residential facility provided Jeremy with the vital treatment and support he needed, it impeded him from having a foster family or being involved in the community. Fortunately, Jeremy excelled in this residential setting and recently became ready to live with a family once more! But placing Jeremy in a foster home is not simple.

Foster youth who stay in residential facilities, like Jeremy, tend to have a history that looks bad on paper and it can scare off potential foster parents. Plus, they require such a high level of support and attention that traditional foster homes are not equipped to serve them so these youth typically remain in these facilities. When a youth is cleared for release but has to stay in a residential facility because there is nowhere else for him to go, the child can lose motivation, revert back to old behaviors and/or pick up new behaviors. CCS believes that every child deserves to have a family and be part of the community so, when Amerigroup (who oversees the healthcare of Georgia’s foster children) approached CCS about partnering with us to develop specialized foster homes that will serve these most difficult cases, we jumped at the opportunity to provide Jeremy and youth like him with the opportunity to be typical teenagers. It is CCS and Amerigroup’s goal to help these youth continue progressing and provide them with lasting relationships, instead of a rotating staff of clinicians.

We intend to reach this goal by setting up homes for these youth with foster parents who we have trained specifically to care for their youth’s specialized needs. We have asked these foster parents not to work so that they can give the youth their full and constant attention. With support from Amerigroup and the Department of Family and Children Services,  CCS will cover rent, living expenses and pay the foster parents a salary. CCS will also pull from many of our programs to provide intensive support to the youth and foster parent(s). One of our SOAR Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention Specialists will meet with the youth and foster parent(s) three times a week to help reinforce positive behavior and decrease negative behavior. A life coach from our STEP program will work with the youth to reach his/her goals toward independence. The foster homes will also be provided with weekly case management meetings, where our staff will brainstorm solutions to any issues that may arise, and 24/7 on call support.

It is because of our specialized programs that CCS was selected to be the first foster care agency in Georgia to provide these intensive support foster homes. We are excited for the privilege of allowing Jeremy and foster youth like him to live independently and be involve in the community. Now that he is out of residential care, Jeremy has plans to join the Boys and Girls Club and take karate lessons; we are thrilled that we get to help him achieve his goals.

There are more foster youth like Jeremy who are ready for a home and family of their own. We already have two others who are waiting to be placed in a home but we need more foster parents! If you are interested in working as a professional foster parent in our modification of traditional foster homes, please contact Anne Sanders at asanders@ccsgeorgia.org or 770-469-6226.

*The foster youth’s name has been changed to protect his identity.

The Miracle of Family: A Reunification Story

Today’s post was contributed by Lisa Nunn. Last July, Lisa came to CCS as a family consultant in our Therapeutic Foster Care program. She has since been promoted to TFC Intake Supervisor. During the transition, our other skilled family consultants took over most of Lisa’s cases but she continued to serve a few youth with whom she had built a deep relationship. Lisa wanted to share the story of one of those youth whose time with CCS is coming to a close. Do not fret for this story has a happy ending!  

I have been working with a youth since July of last year and she has been with one of our Therapeutic foster parents since May of last year.

This youth was adopted at the age of 2, it was an open adoption; therefore, she was never in state care. A year later the adoptive family moved from out of the state where the child was adopted and did not stay in contact with her biological father. They moved several times and ended up here in GA where they placed our youth in custody based on their inability to care for her needs. The biological father was never told where his child was. Ten years after not knowing where his child was, he discovered she was in DFCS custody here. He immediately contacted DFCS and this past fall he attended court where a reunification case plan was ordered. This youth told her teacher that meeting her father was the happiest day of her life.

Since October of last year I have been working weekly with both the youth and her father, along with his wife and their daughter, to build relationships via FaceTime.

At the 3 month review in January it was ordered for this youth to do a home visit before the April court date. DFCS sent this youth to visit with her father and extended family during the Easter/Spring Break holiday. The court review was held at the end of April where the Judge ordered that once school ended (5/21) this young person would move back to the state of her birth to be with her father and in 6 months or less his rights will be restored.

I asked this youth if I could take her somewhere/anywhere before she left where would she want to go. She answered the Georgia Aquarium. Well…. A BIG THANKS to One Simple Wish, this youth and I will be going to the Aquarium this Saturday. And bitter-sweetly Sunday morning she will board a plane to fly to be with her father.

Thank you for allowing me to share!

Lisa M. Nunn

Lisa and this youth’s story is a shining example of the work our Therapeutic Foster Care team does to fight for what is best for the children they serve. All of us at CCS are sad to see this youth go but also thrilled for her to be reunited with her family.