 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
MEMO BLOG | |
Memo Calendar | Memo Pad | Business Memos | Loaves & Fishes | Letters | Home |
HEATHER HILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
 |
| Families and friends of special needs children gather for the grand opening of Albertina Kerr Centers’ new Family Resource Center. Ally Linfoot, right, family involvement coordinator for Albertina Kerr Centers, welcomes all families of special needs children to meet, learn and play at their new Family Resource Center. Linfoot poses with Marsha Hilley, former Albertina-Kerr vice president of Youth & Family Services. |
| MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN |
On the grassy campus of Albertina Kerr Centers at 722 N.E. 162nd Ave., a team of devoted individuals works to erase one of the last stigmas held against a congenital condition: mental illness.
Following Albertina Kerr Centers’ 100-year history of service illustrates the evolution of mental health care over the past century. Created in 1907 to shelter homeless men, Kerr shortly thereafter shifted focus to group homes for “erring” girls and to orphanages for homeless children. Up through the first half of the 20th century, those suffering from either innate and/or circumstantial challenges were excised from society (and their families) and removed to rehabilitative residences.
By the 1960s, opinion shifted in favor of family-centered foster care, phasing out group homes for all but the most challenging cases: those suffering from severe mental and developmental disabilities. Kerr adapted its cause to the new model, devising a continuum of care that combined residential and outpatient facilities with family counseling.
Today, while Kerr continues residential programs for immediate crisis prevention or transitional purposes, it recognizes that patients benefit from the familiarity of their natural surroundings, answering the challenges of everyday living, and incorporating family and community support systems that extend beyond therapy sessions.
The current Kerr mission statement describes the company as “a leader and innovator in building stronger families, working together with the community to create healing for children with emotional or mental challenges and to support self-determination for people with developmental disabilities.”
“When your remove a child from their own setting, you always run the risk of institutionalization,” Family Involvement Coordinator Ally Linfoot said. Among the miniature tables and computer consuls of Kerr’s new Family Resource Center, she talked about how her own initiative finally came to fruition last month. “We strive to be able to provide the kind of services that children would normally have in a residential setting in their own homes with their own families,” she said. “The family needs to know what the professionals are doing to help their child improve so that they can use those same strategies and skills to help their child become a success in the community.”
Five years ago, when Kerr hired Linfoot to help create a more family-driven culture, she immediately proposed what she knew was sorely needed both through her own experience of raising a special needs child and from her work as an advocate for similar families. She envisioned “a place for families who are all facing the same kinds of challenges (to gather), where they can feel comfortable talking to other parents and a place where they could get more information.”
Located in building E on the Kerr campus, the Family Resource Center welcomes all families of children suffering diverse mental challenges. Linfoot hopes the center will become “an asset to the community, open not just to Kerr clients but to the community as a whole.”
By partnering with Oregon Family Support Network and Wraparound Oregon, among other nonprofits and government programs, the center stocks information on a variety of community resources, from schools that cater to special needs children to local services available throughout Multnomah and Clackamas counties.
“I think it’s important to emphasize that one provider may not be everything to everybody,” Linfoot said. “Parents need to be informed so they can make a good decision on what is right for their family.” Parents seeking specific information may help themselves to the center’s library of clinical reference books on symptoms, diagnosis and recommended medications as well as other industry materials that contain skill-building exercises and advice books on parenting special needs children.
The center also keeps mindful of the parent’s own well-being. “It is very difficult to take care of a challenging child if you are not taking care of yourself, so we have a lot of books on that too,” Linfoot said.
Of all the center’s resources, Linfoot values the staff as the center’s most significant asset. Noting that the majority of volunteers also parent special needs children; Linfoot sees the networking factor as the strongest draw. “We all have a wide range of experience, not just the type of mental challenges that our kids have but our backgrounds, as far as our culture and economic diversity.”
The center will feature workshops and family activity nights as well as committee meetings for mental health reform, aiming to unite a community of families who often struggle in isolation.
“I would like to see it become a good, comfortable place for people to feel safe to talk about what is going on in their families, and to get that advice and wide spectrum of experience that families have with their children. I want this also to be a place for parents who work within the system to come; that is something we have never had in this community.” A place where parents can “talk about what is going on in the system as a whole and what kind of strategies we need to further the progress that the community has already made. This will be a good place to exchange information.”
Though mental health professionals will direct some workshops and activities, the staff who oversee the play space of books and toys while facilitating access to books, pamphlets and the three Internet consuls intentionally lack such credentials. “This place needs to be comfortable for families to come to,” Linfoot said. “I don’t want families to come here and feel like they are being analyzed or judged.” Likewise, the casual play space encourages another of Linfoot’s aims, for “children to meet other children and hopefully help them develop their own peer group, because (making friends is) something that many of our children have a challenge with.”
The Family Resource Center is currently open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday; Linfoot hopes to extend the hours into the evenings and weekends, staff permitting.
Following a history of service, from group homes to foster care to outpatient therapy to the current family-focused model, the Family Resource Center represents another shift in the direction of the Albertina Kerr Centers’ goal of full-on community integration, opening one door at a time to topple the stigmas of mental illness while teaching challenged children how to cope in the real-world environment. This is a world that Linfoot hopes will someday view special needs as just another physical difference.
 |
 |
 |
MEMO Advertising | MEMO Archives | MEMO Web Neighbors | MEMO Staff | Home