A Place to Go and Grow:
Saturday Respite Program
This respite program is for adoptive, foster, kinship, and guardianship families raising children between the ages of 8 and 14 with traumatic histories of abuse and neglect. The goal is to enhance family stability and reduce the risk of disruption by providing parents with a break from the challenges of raising children with significant behavioral and emotional issues. Likewise, the respite program is intended to provide a therapeutic environment for traumatized children to grow and develop positive peer relationships and enhanced self esteem.
| Date: |
2nd Saturday of the Month |
| Time: |
10:00 am - 4:00 pm |
| Location: |
900 Varnum Street, NE, Washington, DC 20017 |
| Fee: |
FREE for Eligible Families, all other families please call |
The respite program is a unique and important resource because it provides a safe space for children with similar histories to spend time together. The combination of recreational and therapeutic activities centered on adoption issues creates an environment of trust and belonging. The children who participate in the program have all experienced significant losses and survived varying degrees of abuse and neglect. While school can be a triggering environment for these children, the respite program offers a space where they can feel understood and see their experience mirrored in others.
We use holistic, developmentally appropriate, and personalized strategies to encourage the character development and social and emotional development of each child participating in the respite program. We have adopted a practical, heuristic approach to helping children dig deep and empower their growth and development by providing a safe and nurturing environment where they feel comfortable enough to be themselves. This is accomplished, in part, by incorporating smaller, clinical breakout groups into the program structure which are organized by age, gender, and personality traits/characteristics. Each group is led by a therapist, the same therapist that many of the children see individually for therapy services.
Through our respite program, we also teach the children to give back to the community. Last year the children sold baked items to raise money for the children’s ward at Providence Hospital. The children also organized and ran a yard sale to raise money for respite t-shirts and supplies.