We provide residential care for children in four locations in Louisiana. Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home is in Ruston. Our Transitional Living Program is in Monroe. Methodist Home for Children of Greater New Orleans is in Mandeville and Methodist Children’s Home of Southwest Louisiana is in Sulphur. Our residential facilities cover the three corners of our boot-shaped state; north, southeast and southwest Louisiana.

As you know, each region of Louisiana is unique. You can see it in the ways we enjoy life together. We celebrate the Contraband Days Festival in Calcasieu Parish, the Seafood Festival in St. Tammany Parish, and the Peach Festival in Lincoln Parish. In spite of our regional flavors and fun, we’re all bound together in Louisiana around our common love of an incredibly unique blend of cultures. There is simply no other place like Louisiana!

Because we offer services in Louisiana’s different regions, celebrating and enjoying the regional differences while providing exceptional care for children and families requires that we be bound together around a common way of providing care. With excitement we want to people to say, “there’s no place like the Home!”

I am excited about the new Children and Residential Experiences (CARE) model we are implementing to establish a common way of providing care. As I write this, a large group of our staff are being trained in a week-long introduction to the CARE model. CARE will help us create a common approach for supporting safe environments of care, assist us in developing strong, developmentally appropriate, programming which recognizes that our residents have all been traumatized in significant ways.

Implementing CARE will require three years during which we will be assessing, training, implementing, re-assessing. Our decision to implement CARE is based on our desire to make sure, across Louisiana, that our services are sound, our facilities are excellent, our staff are superb and – consequently – the children and families for whom we care have the best opportunity to be successful.