By Susie Huhn

Executive Director

We held an all-staff meeting the other day and it brought home a couple of things we knew but hadn’t fully digested yet. One, there are a lot of us now: Casa de los Niños has more than 200 employees. Two, when we asked our newcomers to raise a hand … well, a lot of hands sure went up!

Both things illustrate how much we have changed in the last 12 months.

Since June of 2009 we have launched three major new programs. We were able to revive a Family Visitation program that had been abandoned due to a lack of funding. And the best news of all? During the next 12 months we will help more than 4,500 Tucson children.

All in all, we are stronger than we were one year ago. And our ability to swim upstream – when so many currents were pushing against us – is a great tribute to our staff members, volunteers, board members and donors.

There is a cliché that goes, “If you aren’t moving forward you are falling behind.” At Casa de los Niños, we think it’s true. We are always looking for new needs, new opportunities. We found some big ones in 2009-10:

Raising Healthy Kids – Late last summer, we opened a program that offers in-home support to help at-risk parents raise young children. Funded by First Things First, this new effort served 150 families its first year.

Nurse-Family Partnership – Another important program funded by First Things First, our Nurse-Family Partnership team went to work last fall. Our nurses make in-home visits to at-risk, first-time pregnant moms. We help them deliver healthy babies. We then care for mother and child until the baby turns 2. Today we are helping 95 women … and 20 babies!

Behavioral Health Services – In partnership with three other agencies, we opened the doors at Casa de los Niños Behavioral Health Services in March. Our focus will be to provide behavioral health services to foster children and former foster children under the age of 22. By next summer, this will be the largest program we have.

When Sister Kathleen Clark opened Casa de los Niños in 1973, she was determined to help abused children. Today, we are actively involved in a number of efforts designed to prevent child abuse before it begins. We are helping abused and neglected kids in ways she never could have imagined.

I think she would be proud of us. I know that I am.