Student Contributor -M. Lalley
Sally’s House is an emergency foster care facility for children ages 2-12 years old. Children come to Sally’s House because they have been removed from their home due to abuse, neglect, abandonment or criminal activity. Children may only be brought to Sally’s House by local law enforcement or Child Protective Services. Sally’s House provides a caring, safe and loving home for up to 20 children at one time until a more appropriate foster placement can be organized or the child is able to return to their home once the situation is resolved.
Often children arrive upset, disoriented and with little more than the clothes on their back. While at Sally’s House they receive: clean clothes and personal toiletries, three meals and two snacks per day, instruction in life and social skills, daily tutoring or assistance with school work, daily activities in the gym, playground, indoor swimming pool and game room, supervised visitations and phone calls with family (if approved by caseworker), transportation to original school (through the HEART program), books, toys and a personal quilt, on-site counseling, and psycho-social evaluation. After their stay at Sally’s House kids will usually go to a foster home, return home after situation has been corrected, or they go to live with an approved relative. Before there was a Sally’s House, children were taken from unfit homes to a caseworker’s office where they could wait several hours for the first available foster home. The Department of Children and Family Services decided to partner with The Salvation Army. After partnering with The Salvation Army, Sally’s House was created so children would immediately have a place to stay until the best fit home was found.
Sally’s House is always in need of items for the children that they take in. Items include: girls and boys clothing sizes 2T to 14 (ages 2 to 12), pants/jeans, shirts, underwear, socks, tights and leggings, sweatshirts and hoodies, shoes, winter hats, mittens, and scarves. Sally’s House is also always in need of personal care items for the children including items like shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hair brushes, and hair accessories (hair ties, headbands, hair clips, etc.). Teachers might partner with Sally’s House to organize either a class wide or school wide drive where students in the school collect items that can be donated to the children at Sally’s House. This would give students an opportunity to think of other children who are their own age but might be less fortunate, or give students an opportunity to consider that their peers might be in need of or utilize the services provided by Sally’s House or its sister organization Evangeline’s House for teens.
