The simple gift of a teddy bear from Providence House to its visitor is a reminder of the love, comfort and security Ohio’s first licensed crisis nursery provides the local community.
The teddy bears are given not only to the newborn-through-10-year-old children who enter the free, emergency shelter, but also to special friends who may be volunteers, guests or donors. The new toy is sometimes the first one a child receives. To friends of Providence House, such a gift can leave a lasting impact. That is the goal of the crisis nursery, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
Natalie Leek-Nelson, who has served as president and CEO of Providence House for the past 15 years, has numerous moving teddy bear stories. But she prefers to highlight hard-hitting facts she and her staff have worked tirelessly to uncover. Take, for example, an informative chart that the Providence House team developed. Leek-Nelson often uses it to show state legislators and potential investors how Providence House services can make a lifetime impact.
The chart compares the positive versus adverse outcomes throughout the lifespan of a nutured child and a vulnerable, maltreated child. At age 5, a nurtured child may take a trip to the zoo, while a child raised in a violent home may see his or her mother get hit. At age 14, one child may get his or her driver’s license, while the other may drop out of high school. By age 30, one may have a healthy family of his or her own, while the other may be abusing children. According to statistics, each year Ohio has 30,000 maltreated children, which equates to an estimated cost of $600 million over the course of a lifetime.
Providence House works to break this cycle not only by assisting children, but empowering their parents with help they need to maintain a stable, healthy home. A year ago, the agency helped 272 children and 121 families in crisis. Ninety-seven percent of the children they helped were successfully reunited with a parent or guardian.
“For the first 20 years, we only provided an emergency shelter for kids,” Leek-Nelson says. “We wanted to take the model in a different direction and not only use it as a child abuse prevention/protection program, but a family preservation program. We realized from talking with parents who were bringing their kids here that they grew up in the exact same situation their kids were now in, and they wanted to break those cycles.”
Teddy bears alone can’t combat child abuse, but Leek-Nelson and her staff have seen their method making a difference — long after that first bear hug.
To learn more about Providence House or to find out how you can help, visit provhouse.org or call 216-651-5982.