A Greater Hope was founded by Ms. Eva Ford, a visionary leader and passionate advocate for children in need. As Ms. Ford explains, “you never forget where you came from and you must always reach back to help others.” Children, Ms. Ford will tell you, are the heart and soul of a community and they need to be well cared for and protected. At the request of San Bernardino County, in 2002, Ms. Ford launched her third nonprofit organization, A Greater Hope. San Bernardino County Child and Family Services was desperate for a Foster Family Agency in the city of Barstow as existing agencies would not travel deep into the desert, yet there were scores of children in need of quality foster family homes. What began in an office building in downtown Barstow Ms. Ford purchased to house the new agency, has grown to four separate locations, in two counties, with 50 more than employees and countless lives changed.
Overview of Services
A Greater Hope is a nationally accredited community based organization serving hundreds of at-risk adults, vulnerable children and heroic resource (foster) families each year. A Greater Hope provides a continuum of care that includes Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment, Treatment Foster Care, Therapeutic Foster Care, Intensive Services Foster Care, Adoption Services, comprehensive Behavioral Health Services and Supervised Visitation.
Service Area
Program services are focused in the counties of San Bernardino and Riverside. Spanning more than 20,000 square miles, San Bernardino County is the largest county in the continental United States and, along with Riverside County, holds some of the neediest families in our nation. A Greater Hope staff drive more than one million miles every year to provide vital prevention and intervention services to adults and children in their homes, at their schools, or in our three office locations. Our goal is that every client, from a 38-year-old single man to 3-day-old twin baby girls, finds A Greater Hope.
SERVICES
Family Development
A Greater Hope excels at finding quality resource (foster) parents to provide safe, stable and loving homes for children in foster care. Since its inception in 2002, A Greater Hope has found safe and loving homes for more than 5,000 abused children. The Family Development team identifies and cultivates prospective resource parents across the vast geographic landscape of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. A Greater Hope team members provide extensive pre-screening, vetting, training and ongoing support to families to ensure they successfully complete the arduous resource parent approval process and welcome children into their homes.
Once a family is approved to foster, A Greater Hope provides robust matching services for all the foster children placed in that home. These meticulous efforts help ensure foster child placement stability, which is vital as children in foster care often experience multiple moves in and out of homes. In addition, A Greater Hope boasts strong foster parent retention rates, which is a result of our extensive support services.
Treatment Foster Care
The strength of A Greater Hope rests in its diverse network of quality resource (foster) parents. With specialized training and 24-hour support, A Greater Hope resource parents skillfully care for children and adolescents to meet a wide range of emotional, behavioral, social and medical needs. A Greater Hope's Treatment Foster Care provides highly coordinated, trauma-informed care for abused and neglected children. Child and Family Team Meetings (CFTM) are held in collaboration with the foster child and their family of origin to give them meaningful input into their case plans and determine their individualized services. These CFTMs also unite the diverse child welfare agencies assigned to each foster child and include resource parents, attorneys, therapists, teachers, biological family members, social workers and more. Currently, 76% of children placed in A Greater Hope homes have a CFTM, which is remarkable as the state wide average as of January 1, 2019 is 47%. Moreover, unlike the County system, which assigns up to 50 child clients to a single Social Worker, A Greater Hope Social Workers provided individualized services to a caseload of 15 child clients. For children with more complex needs, Therapeutic Foster Care services are provided to help improve behavior and preserve the placement of the child in the home. Wrapped in robust services while in the security of A Greater Hope home, children begin to heal and thrive.
Intensive Services Foster Care
All children in foster care have experienced trauma; however for some children the abuse they have endured is so severe it necessitates a higher level of care. A Greater Hope is one of only two Foster Family Agencies approved to provide Intensive Services Foster Care (ISFC) services for foster children in San Bernardino County. The ultimate goal of the ISFC program is to help keep children in foster family homes, not residential facilities or even moved out of the state. In the Program, A Greater Hope pairs specially trained resource parents with professional and paraprofessional support. ISFC resource parents receive a high level of training and services so that they can meet individual intensive care needs of foster youth.
Adoption
When children are unable to be reunified with biological family, A Greater Hope offers a full scope of adoption services. Our Adoption Social Workers provide step-by-step guidance to families at every stage in the adoption process, helping them navigate the court system, complete piles of paperwork and reach the ultimate stage of adoption finalization.
Behavioral Health
A Greater Hope's evidence-based Behavioral Health services address the trauma experienced by individuals, both adults and children, as well as couples and families. The goal of the Program is to increase coping skills, regulate emotions and stabilize behaviors. Behavioral Health Services include: individual therapy, family therapy, play therapy and art expression therapy.
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Services
In order to strengthen at-risk families and prevent children from entering the foster care system, Greater Hope provides Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Services. Program services are provided to individuals and families who are referred by the County to receive 8 to 12 weeks of services including:
Individual Counseling
Family Counseling
Couples' Counseling
Parenting Education
Anger Management
Life Skills Classes which build skills such as: budgeting, cleaning, job skills and more.
Behavioral Specialist Services
A Greater Hope's Behavioral Health Specialists specifically focus on improving a child's behavior. Services are provided with the resource parents and child together, in their home, to more effectively address the behavioral challenge. Goals of Behavioral Health Specialist Services are to improve anger management, functioning at school, communication skills and more. The Specialist provides valuable insights to the parents the skills the child is learning from their Therapist and can addresses behaviors as they happen. Behavioral Specialists provide steadfast support, ongoing education and ultimately reinforce the child's Treatment Plan.
Parent Partner
Parent Partners are current resource parents who provide in-home, peer support to other resource parents as they move through the foster system, the court system, the adoption process and more. Parent Partners have first-hand experience with the child welfare system and offer a wealth of knowledge to A Greater Hope's resource parents. A Greater Hope Parent Partner also facilitates support groups for A Greater Hope resource parents, providing them with a safe space to express the joys and challenges inherent in fostering and connects them with community resources.
Probation Services
In partnership with the San Bernardino County Probation Department, A Greater Hope provides individual, family and group therapy to youth in juvenile probation. A Greater Hope Therapists work with youth to help them stabilize their behaviors and heal so that they can reach their full potential.
Supervised Visitation
To ensure the safety and protection of children, judges will order that children only have contact with a parent when a neutral third person is present. This type of third-person visitation arrangement is called supervised visitation. A Greater Hope provides supervised visitation for children of all ages at three offices. To provide a welcoming, comfortable environment for families participating in supervised visitation, A Greater Hope has 11 private visitation rooms each brightly appointed with child-friendly decor, seating, games and toys.
