Services
Catholic Charities Serves Children and Families
Catholic Charities programs for children and families focus on building and unifying families, helping children and families achieve healthy social and emotional relationships, and securing special education and behavioral health services that provide the means to achieve self-reliance. The current recession has had a profound effect on our children in Maryland. Our society relies on safety net programs to insulate children from harm, however, programs serving children and families have been overwhelmed by the increasing demand for services.
Poverty
- 13% (more than 172,000) children in Maryland live in poverty.
- When asked, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you and your family needed?” one in five Maryland households with children answered, “yes.”
- 20.3% of our children live in a household that receives public assistance. Two-thirds of Temporary Cash Assistance recipients are children.
- 92,000 children have been affected by foreclosure, a 4% increase since 2007.
- The number of children in Maryland with at least one unemployed parent is now 107,000, an 8% increase in the last decade.
Child Welfare
- In 2011, there were 8,383 findings of neglect or abuse by local departments of social services: 5,532 cases of neglect, 1,564 cases of physical abuse, 1,262 cases of sexual abuse, and 25 cases of mental abuse.
- 7,563 children had to be removed from their homes to be safe. Of these, 5,487 were placed in other family homes, and 823 were placed in group homes. 710 children became too old (“aged out”) of the foster care system without having permanent homes to go to.
Healthcare
- In the past 12 months, only 59.4% of children with emotional, developmental, or behavioral problems actually were able to receive mental health care or counseling of some type.
- 20% of Maryland children under 18 have special healthcare needs, beyond those required by children generally. Special needs include an increased risk of a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition.
- 38.5% of families with children with special healthcare needs do not have adequate health insurance, public or private, to pay for the services they need. About 25% of these families pay more than $1,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses per year.
How Catholic Charities has helped this year
- Through our Head Start and Early Head Start programs, nearly 700 young children and their families achieved meaningful educational, developmental, and family self-sufficiency outcomes.
- Our Treatment Foster Care program placed more than 100 children with medical, emotional, behavioral, and/or psychiatric problems in stable homes with specially trained foster families.
- Villa Maria Behavioral Health Clinics throughout Maryland provided more than 73,000 counseling services to nearly 5,000 children and families in need.
- Villa Maria Schools educated and treated more than 200 children with behavioral and mental health issues on our four campuses, alleviating the demand for these services in public schools.
Abuse Prevention
Adoption and Pregnancy Services
Mental Health
Programs for Children and Families
Shelters for Women, Children, and Families
Many of the programs list below are part of Catholic Charities Child and Family Services.
Abuse Prevention
St. Vincent’s Child Abuse Prevention Programs, Illuminations, provides child sexual abuse prevention, awareness and education services.
Adoption Services
The experienced adoption professionals at Catholic Charities provide extensive support & guidance through all phases of the adoption process.
Mental Health
We offer a variety of mental health services to children and families in nine counties.
Services for Children and Families
Family Resources
Family Navigator Services is a free service for Baltimore County parents, guardians, or other family members of children with intensive needs related to mental health or developmental disabilities.
Center for Family Services provides treatment foster care services, pregnancy counseling, parenting and adoption planning services, and adoptive family services.
Families that Work assists women who are temporary cash assistance recipients starting in their third trimester of pregnancy with attaining the life skills and employment skills necessary to secure employment.
My Sister’s Place Women’s Center is a comprehensive resource center for homeless and impoverished women and children in Baltimore.
Project Fresh Start provides homeless families with housing, counseling, case management, referrals to remedial education, life and job skills training, parenting workshops, financial literacy workshops, case management, and a host of community services.
Family to Family Respite Program provides overnight relief for those caregivers in Baltimore, Harford, Cecil and Carroll Counties who face the challenge of raising a child or adolescent with emotional or behavioral difficulties.
Hope, a specialized treatment foster care program provides services to medically fragile infants and children.
TASC, a specialized treatment foster care program providing services to youth ages 12-21 and their families. TASC is an alternative to a juvenile services program.
The Treatment Foster Care Program serves children with medical, emotional, behavioral and/or psychiatric problems within specially trained foster families.
Head Start
Carroll County Head Start is a child and family development program that enables children from low-income families in Carroll County to be better prepared when entering kindergarten, thereby improving the likelihood of their success in school and in life.
Harford County Early Head Start is a child and family development program that provides a child development program and parenting classes to pregnant women, parents, and children under three years of age from low-income families in Harford County.
St. Jerome’s Head Start, in Baltimore city, is a child and family development program that enables children from low-income families in southwest Baltimore to be better prepared when entering kindergarten, thereby improving the likelihood of their success in school and in life.
Residential Programs
St. Vincent’s Villa offers both a Residential Treatment Center and Diagnostic and Evaluation and Treatment Program for children with emotional and behavioral disturbance, ages 5 through 13 years.
Therapeutic Weekend Respite Program
St. Vincent's Villa Therapeutic Group Home
Schools
Shelters for Women, Children and Families
Anna’s House offers transitional and permanent housing for homeless women and their children in Harford County.
My Sister’s Place Women’s Center is a comprehensive resource center for homeless and impoverished women and children in Baltimore.
Sarah’s House is a supportive housing program for homeless families in Anne Arundel County.
