One Church, One Child of Washington State dba UJIMA Community Services Programs
It should be noted that our agency is staffed by 5 FTE, but a multitude of volunteers who donate their time and expertize for our children and their families.
Community Engagement/Information/Recruitment/Training/Licensing
Our primary program/service is to engage then inform the communities of color and recruit families to answer the need for our children who need forever homes. Included in recruitment is community information giving, family "pre-service" training, and foster care/adoption home studies/licensing.
Child Placement/Case Management/Support
After engaging the community then training, home studying, and licensing the family, our next program/service is to match and place children with the families, manage the families cases, 24/7 support of the families and children to permanency, and continual community outreach for resources and support services.
Family Preservations Projects
Assisting families to preserve themselves, keeping children out of the foster care system! These program/services: support kinship providers; mentor pregnant teens and young ladies to have more healthy babies; encourage our youth towards positive behavior and lifestyles; and suppors under-aged females whose mothers are incarcerated. Each program works through intensive community engagement to ensure the family foundation is secure for success.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Highlighting our successes as we focus on the need for families for our children: In March of 2010 our agency was approached to recruit, by June 30, 2010, a minimum of 3 Somali families to foster/adopt Somali children who are in the child welfare system. Our agency recruited 8 Somali families during that period, and from July through October 2010, has continued to recruit 37 additional Somali families -
collective work and responsibility ("ujima") with community engagement to maintain a healthy lifestyle for our children.
As our recruitment of families for children of African descent (African American, African immigrant, spanish speaking, and deaf/hard of hearing) flourishes,
we have an ever growing need for general and targeted recruitment tools such as:
- qualified MSW facilitators for foster care/adoption home studies & licensing
- qualified bi-lingual trainers and support materials
- documents and training materials in the languages, and responsive to the cultures, of the families which are answering the need of our children who are waiting for forever homes.