With the “dog days” of summer quickly approaching, we mark the beginning of our fiscal year. Despite a number of obstacles over the past year, we ended the year successfully, serving a record number of children and families, exploring new areas of service delivery, and building a firm clinical infrastructure for our program.   Please click on the link to view our 2006-2007 Annual Report for details about this past year’s accomplishments and outcomes.

As we embark on a new fiscal year, we are projecting even more growth in service delivery and additional development in our Child and FamilyResourceCenter, our Children’s Advocacy and AssessmentCenter, and our SafePlace Program.  As we serve more children, many of whom are sibling groups awaiting placement together, we have more opportunities to partner with birth families, foster families, relatives, and adoptive families to ensure that placements are stable, safe, and sensitive to the needs of the children.  Preplacement planning will help to ensure that these placements are permanent and stable. 

Rainbow Connection, our Children’s Advocacy and AssessmentCenter, will be retooling its services to ensure that all children who make an outcry of physical or sexual abuse receive the services required in a child-friendly, non-threatening, safe, and multi-disciplinary setting.  The Rainbow Connection will be preparing for re-accreditation in 2008, successfully securing  necessary funding to underwrite the services provided at no charge to these children and their non-offending caregivers. 

Our SafePlace Program continues to expand its reach across the Metro Atlanta area.  This past year, this program for runaway and homeless youth has provided support, therapeutic services, family mediation, and family advocacy services for an increasing number of children and family members.  Our education and outreach efforts have reached thousands of school children and our community partners – QT stations and local Fire Departments – continue to provide the link between runaway and homeless children and Rainbow House.

We will also explore new frontiers for Rainbow House:  to meet the needs of young adults who are transitioning from the foster care system into the “real world,” we want to develop a Transitional Living Program.  A program such as this will help kids from the ages of 18 through 21 accomplish tangible life-skills such as opening a bank account, applying for a job, filling out applications, managing a budget, shopping for groceries, and running a household.  We’ll be applying for a grant to fund this program for the next fiscal year, but this year, we’ll be identifying necessary program components, searching for real estate to house these young adults, and recruiting, hiring, and training staff members to facilitate this program.

The most exciting and challenging aspect of 2007-2008 will be our journey toward accreditation by the Council on Accreditation.  Prior to our site visit by the Council in April of 2008, our newly-formed Performance and Quality Improvement program will help us explore the systems of service delivery needed to produce long-lasting change in the lives of our children and families.  This process will not only improve these systems; it will help us identify specific outcomes of the work we accomplish.  We’ll be able to state, with confidence, “This is the program we offer and we know it works for children and families because of specific, measurable results and outcomes.”

To support this exciting growth in services, we will be seeking new and creative ways to increase our resources.  We have a new array of fundraising events scheduled throughout 2007-2008 that will not only support our new programming but will offer opportunities for Rainbow House to partner with various community stakeholders.

If 2006-2007 was a year of transition, stabilization, and reorganization, 2007-2008 will be a year of new ventures and growth.  We look forward to a successful, exciting year – be a part of the excitement!