February 25, 2002

RESIDENTS of a Family Care cottage at Texas Baptist Children's Home & Family Services carry on the normal routines of life while building relationships, learning life skills and gaining spiritual insight.

Safe harbor for single moms
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___ROUND ROCK--Rayeanne found herself in crisis when her husband of 16 years walked out one day, leaving her to support herself and two elementary-age children.
___Ruth Ann grew tired of having to move her three children from one unsafe place to another on short notice.
___Dawn needed a place to get her life together and help her 2-year-old daughter after their drug-addicted husband and father left them destitute.
___Glenda and her two children fled from her abusive husband, seeking a safe place where he could not harm them.
___Four women from different backgrounds and with different needs. Yet each found a new lease on life while living under the care of Texas Baptist Children's Home & Family Services.
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas agency has pioneered a program to aid single mothers in crisis. That program, called Family Care, will gain national exposure next month when two TBCH officials present the model at the annual meeting of the Child Welfare League of America March 7.
___The program throws out a lifeline--as well as a temporary home--to women in profound need and fills a gap in existing social services in the central Texas region.
___"This is a place of miracles," Rayeanne explained. "It saved my life--literally."
___She was and is a schoolteacher. But when her husband walked out, she could not make ends meet on her salary. She made too much to qualify for federal aid but not enough to live on.
___And that was only the start of her problems.
___"I was in denial for one month," she explained. "We needed some real intensive care."
___When Rayeanne and her _third-grade and fifth-grade children moved into one of the Family Care cottages, they found the support system they needed. They received counseling and spiritual encouragement. She learned money management skills. And together, mother and children learned they could survive even though the unthinkable had happened to them.
___Rayeanne recalled her son reading the autobiography of Corrie ten Boom during their stay at the Round Rock children's home. Comparing his own situation to that of the concentration camp survivor, he asked: "How can you get to the place where you lose everything but God is e

OFF THE DEN, a playroom is visible to the left and a private room for telephone and computer access is visible to the right.

nough?"
___Through the care of TBCH employees, Rayeanne and her children learned that very lesson, she said. "It absolutely turned our lives around."
___They've been living on their own for five years now, and Rayeanne recently remarried. She is a vocal and passionate supporter of the Family Care program, which is supported in part by Texas Baptists' gifts to the BGCT Cooperative Program.
___Similar stories continue to unfold at the children's home as single mothers and their children come into the program broke and broken but leave with the resources to become successful.
___Some former clients have gone on to earn law degrees. Some have met other challenging goals like learning to drive a car or learning marketable job skills for the first time.
___"Success is a relative thing," explained Debbie Rippstein, director of the TBCH Round Rock campus and one of the first resident managers for the Family Care program. "The mom who comes here and learns to drive a car or gets her GED is just as successful as the mom who graduates from college."
___Women in Family Care come from "all walks of life," said Linda Martinez, intake coordinator. What they have in common, she added, is motivation to get their lives back in order.
___Today, 40 applicants are waiting for placement in one of the four Family Care cottages on TBCH's Round Rock campus. They will be accepted in turn as the 20 families currently under care move back out on their own.
___Each Family Care cottage houses five families, who share a well-appointed and spacious home with each other and with a residential manager. Each family unit is given a private bedroom and bathroom. T

COTTAGES provide private bedrooms and baths for each family

he cottages feature four common areas--a large kitchen with individual refrigerators and cabinet space for each family, a dining room, a living room and a den.
___There's even a private room for computer work and telephone conversations, with a window to the den so moms can watch their children while taking care of private business.
___Two additional cottages are under construction, with one slated for opening in April and the other in June. The program also will expand to Houston later this year.
___Women accepted into the Family Care program pay nothing for the housing and related services. They are allowed to stay for three months, with an optional extension of three months.
___From the cottage, they depart for work or school each day, and their children go to school or daycare just like other children in the community.
___Nights and weekends offer special opportunities such as parenting classes, money management classes, spiritual enrichment and group therapy sessions.
___The recipe for success at Family Care calls for a healthy mix of compassionate listening, material support and spiritual undergirding.
___"Our staff are very compassionate people," Rippstein said. "We serve all people of all faiths and of no faith. We are unashamedly a Christian organization, but we're not going to shove anything down their throats."
___Yet inevitably, clients in the Family Care program ask spiritual questions. And the TBCH staff members are ready to address those questions.
___"We've had a lot of women come to saving faith in Christ," Rippstein said. "But it's not been through revivals; it's been through personal conversation."
___The security found in the arms of this Texas Baptist institution encompasses not only the eternal but the immediate as well.
___One worker in the Family Care program recalled the gratitude expressed by a mother on her second day in one of the cottages: "Last night, I slept all night for the first time. And my kids slept all night and felt safe for the first time."
___

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