By Children’s Program Coordinator, Josh Chittum
Many toothy grins spread across the faces of children staying at Community LINC over the holidays due to generous donors dropping off bag after bag of wrapped Christmas presents. The gifts gave birth to palpable excitement for our youngest residents, who remind me every day that they are not homeless children, but children. What child doesn’t go wild with glee when they see handfuls of presents brought into their living space?
Perhaps one of the most impactful Christmas gifts that not just current, but future residents received this holiday season, however, didn’t come in a wrapped package that fit underneath a tree. It came in the form of a monetary donation from a fantastic Community LINC supporter and the company she works for.
This donation will allow Community LINC to purchase a developmental screening tool called the Ages and Stages Questionnaire. The tool will identify the developmental and emotional strengths of our children from birth to age 5 ½ as well as areas in which they need to grow.
With this tool we can now provide data to Melanie about her 10-month old son, Trevor, who has not received enough tummy time and struggles with gross motor movement. Melanie is not a bad parent. She needs someone to partner with her to provide the best environment for her child whom she absolutely adores and loves.
The tool will also provide strategies that Sheryl can use in the home to help her four year old son improve his language acquisition because he is currently behind his peers. And it creates the internal infrastructure for Children’s Program staff to refer parents to a specialist for children like Mikey who struggles to control his emotions on program night and soothes himself in developmentally inappropriate ways.
This tool will ultimately have lifelong impacts on many, many families that stay at Community LINC. It will provide parents with knowledge they may not have otherwise received. It will give parents strategies they can use when they exit into permanent housing. And it will help provide a strong foundation for children to grow and develop in a healthy way.
The books, the clothes, and the games given over the holidays were wonderful and greatly appreciated. I do not aim to take anything away from that generosity when I express how excited I am that Children’s Program received the donation to purchase this screening tool. It is a present that will continue to give next Christmas and beyond. That type of impact is what we hope to have on all of our residents, no matter their age.
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