Mary Ellen Lewis, Donor Relations Manager, spoke to us about Helping Hand Home. Helping Hand Home is the oldest continuously operating residential childcare agency in Travis County and a priceless resource kept strong and viable through community support. Helping Hand Home for Children provides a safe haven for children healing from physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect or abandonment. Mary Ellen told us that Helping Hands Home was formed as a children’s home 130 ago to help house orphans. It is now licensed as residential-treatment center for children ages 5-13. They are referred children who need help recovering from trauma in their lives. The Home has the motto “Make a child a child again!” Helping Hands Home also operates a foster care and adoption program. Their facility is in the middle of Hyde Park, and they just built eight new homes to help with the transition to a more stable life. They also operate an on-site UT charter school that includes four teachers and four in-classroom therapists. The Home serves 45 children at a time as residents and more through their foster care and adoption program. Mary Ellen showed us a video with interviews with foster parents, adoptive parents, and Jim Spencer, a local meteorologist, who has been a mentor for one of the children passing through the Home. They have a total staff of 130 people, but also need volunteers, particularly in the Summer when the children are out of school. In 2022, 88% of the children achieved placement stability in foster families, and 82% of the children completed residential treatment and were restored to a family setting. Helping Hands Home has also facilitated 189 adoptions since 2010. For more information go to www.helpinghandhome.org.