ABOUT CARING FOR CHILDREN

CARING for Children, Inc. began out of a study group at Central United Methodist Church. With the cooperation of Buncombe County Department of Social Services, CARING conducted a study of needs of children and families in Buncombe County over a 36-day period in January and February of 1975. Conclusions of this study indicated a need for shelter care for children in crisis in Buncombe County. Our Place, an emergency shelter service for children, opened in July of 1975 to provide care for these children. It was designed to provide temporary care to help children through the crisis period and give the social workers time to develop a good long-term placement for an individual child.

A need was seen not only for temporary shelter care, but also for longer-term care for difficult-to-place teenagers. After study, planning, and the assistance of the United Methodist Children’s Home in Winston-Salem, a program was designed to serve difficult to place teenagers in the Western North Carolina. The Children’s Home provided a substantial grant to help fund the program and furnished the expertise and the general program design. In July of 1978, Serendipity was opened to its first youth.

At the same time as the Serendipity home was being developed, a youth advocacy group was responding to different needs in the community. The Youth Services Action Group of Asheville and Buncombe County saw a need to serve youth that were status offenders (runaways, truants, and undisciplined youth) in the community. At the time, chronic status offenders were routinely placed in training schools. With the passage of PL 19142, these youth could no longer be served in training schools. Local community-based services were needed to serve the youth that were headed for serious trouble. Resulting from Y.S.A.G.’s and the Junior League’s efforts, the Buncombe County Group Home was opened in September of 1977.

Mailing Address:
CARING For Children
P.O. Box 19113
Asheville, NC 28815

Physical Address:
CARING For Children
50 Reddick Road
Asheville, NC 28805

Telephone:
(828) 298-0186

Fax:
(828) 298-4870

Email:
info@caring4children.org