La Casa de mi Padre provides a safe and loving home environment for children who have been removed from their homes due to hard situations. They may spend a short time with us. Or they may spend time with us until they are young adults. However, there is one thing we know that rings true for almost every child we have ever served: they long to connect back with their own family.
La Casa de mi Padre has two accredited programs under the government’s supervision: our family style care for children and our program which works with biological families. This latter program has been far the most humbling and challenging, but we deeply feel that family is worth fighting for.
When a child is placed under our care, we do the deep and hard work to locate biological family, visit and determine if and when it is healthy and safe for the child to reconnect and work intentionally to build healthy and growing relationships.
The approach of the court systems has been to place the child back with family, often without follow-up and support. Our desire is that the child is placed back into a loving family when safe and in the best interest of the child. We long for the family to be committed to working on the issues of separation and feels supported in that journey.
Since the pandemic began, we have been unable to continue one of the most important aspects of our family program: family visitation day on the farm each month. This special day each month provides supervised time between the child and their family, planned and unplanned times of interaction, teaching times, group therapy times and a meal together. The children look forward to sharing with their families. But for a year and a half, we have not had authorization to have families visit. We did keep interaction going via phone calls, but a big hug and face-to-face chats have been longed for.
In August we were able to finally obtain permission to begin this aspect of the program again. In September we held our first family visitation day of the farm since February of 2020. And it was a day of joy. It was a day of recommitting to the hard work ahead, both for La Casa and for the families. Join us in praying for each family we walk alongside.
