Epworth Children’s Home will provide intensive, in-home services to Upstate, Midlands and Lowcountry families with children at risk of being placed in state-funded care, thanks to a grant from the South Carolina Department of Social Services.
DSS selected Epworth as the recipient of the HOMEBUILDERS® Capacity Building Grant, through which the department partners with local providers to bring an evidence-based, trauma-informed model of care to families across the state.
HOMEBUILDERS® provides intensive, in-home crisis intervention, counseling and life-skills education for families with children from birth to age 18 who are at imminent risk of placement in state-funded care. It is the oldest and best-documented Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) program in the United States.
The goal of HOMEBUILDERS® is to prevent the unnecessary out-of-home placement of children through intensive, on-site intervention, and to teach families new problem-solving skills to prevent future crises.
“Epworth Children’s Home is acutely attuned to the changing structure of family units, the challenging economic and social problems that some South Carolina families face daily, and the increasing numbers of our state’s children who are at imminent risk of out-of-home placement,” said the Rev. John E. Holler Jr., Epworth’s president and CEO.
“Epworth has responded to these challenges by developing new programs that directly address the needs of children and families, and by creating initiatives that serve families in an expanding variety of ways.”
Through its Center for Family Empowerment – part of its Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing – Epworth will build a HOMEBUILDERS® program to serve families in the Upstate, Midlands and Lowcountry.
Epworth will collaborate with nonprofits, community partners, and local United Methodist Churches in South Carolina to develop the program and identify families in need of intervention services. Epworth plans to deliver these services by Spring 2021.
