According to Family Compass CEO Ona Foster,
While we were saddened to announce the cancellation of our North Star Luncheon scheduled for Monday, April 27, at Dallas Country Club, we followed our community leaders in their steadfast protection of the public health. We were excited to share our passion for preventing child abuse with the 350 expected guests, but completely agree that the safety of our community is the top priority. Like so many other agencies, the cancellation of our event left a large gap in funding for our agency of around $100,000. As such, we began actively working with close foundation partners for emergency funding and strategically reaching out to community donors. We also instituted expense reductions to preserve operating cash for salaries to keep our current workforce in place.
As soon as the crisis hit, we performed check-ins with every family we serve to set up schedules for continued services virtually or via phone. We know from experience that the current health crisis we are facing is already increasing one of the three factors that lead to child abuse – stress – and we anticipate an “echo crisis” in child abuse during this time. As such, we know how critical it will be to continue to prevent abuse and neglect using our tried and true methods for each family we serve so they do not end up as another statistic in the system.
We are committed to keeping the Family Compass team connecting into homes. The need is greater now than ever. We currently have a waiting list of 38 families in our Home Mentoring programs alone. As we push forward in our work, we have faith that our community will support us so that we can continue to be a front-line defense in keeping children safe and at home.
* Graphic and photo provided by Family Compass