State of Hope honors foster hub
Restoration Rome’s publicprivate partnership to safeguard children may become a model for other Georgia communities.
Restoration Rome is one of five organizations in Georgia selected for grant funding and technical assistance as a State of Hope site.
“We’ll be working with the state regarding how our comprehensive care center is going to be replicated across the state,” spokesman Courtney Cash said. “There is a model emerging at Restoration Rome that doesn’t exist anywhere else yet.”
Jeff and Mary Margaret Mauer of Global Impact International are leading a makeover of the old Southeastern Elementary School on Crane Street to serve as centralized hub for foster care services in Floyd County.
Cash said more than 20 local entities are involved — from churches, service clubs and the YMCA to Court Appointed Special Advocates and the Department of Family and Children’s Services.
“Restoration Rome is actually a building,” he noted. “What happens within the building is a collaboration of multiple agencies and child service organizations.”
The State of Hope competition sponsored by Georgia DFCS looked for “big ideas” that use public-private partnerships to safeguard children. Georgia State University and Georgia Family Connection also are part of the initiative aimed at creating a larger learning community.
Tom Rawlings, interim director of Georgia DFCS, said 60 applications were received and 57 of the groups were invited to be part of what he’s calling the Hope Ecosystem.
Restoration Rome was tapped to receive specialized support along with four other entities, in Dalton, Watkinsville, Columbus and Brunswick.
The call went out for innovative grassroots efforts focusing on one or more of the four state-defined “opportunities for hope” — education, becoming trauma-informed, quality care-giving and economic self-sufficiency.
“These are the priority areas that we believe will have the greatest impact on keeping children safe, strengthening families and empowering communities,” Rawlings said in a release announcing the State of Hope sites.
Cash said the state grant will go toward completing Phase I of the Restoration Rome plan, the $975,000 renovation of the former school. The project started in mid-2016 with volunteers helping to gut the interior. Agencies started occupying space in February, as it became available, and more than 100 foster families have received assistance with clothing, supplies and after-school programs so far.
“We’re about 75 percent done,” Cash said. “We’re within about $125,000 of our fundraising goal and projected to have the cen- ter operating by the end of the year.”
There are three phases to follow in Restoration Rome’s $2.2 million strategic plan to become a “one-stop-shop” for foster care resources in the community.
The facility will offer intake and triage for local children entering the system, supervised parental visits, physical and mental healthcare services, education, mentoring and various other supports.