Children's Home + Aid in Greater Englewood

Children's Home + Aid delivers services at these locations.

Children’s Home + Aid has a long-standing and deep commitment to the greater Englewood community of Chicago. The agency offers a continuum of services in this area with the goal of helping families achieve economic self-sufficiency and ending the cycle of poverty and violence in this community. In greater Englewood, Children’s Home + Aid has attracted over $1 million in private philanthropic investments and over $4 million in local, state and federal dollars to fund a comprehensive pipeline of services.

The Mitzi Freidheim Englewood Child + Family Center

The Mitzi Freidheim Englewood Child + Family Center, located at 1701 West 63rd Street, serves more than 200 children, six weeks to six years, and their families with Head Start and Early Head Start programming. This Center occupies a brand new, state of the art building that opened in 2007, meeting a critical need in the Englewood community for expanded early childhood slots. Services are designed to meet the needs of the entire family, offering parent support, GED classes, and linkage to other resources in the area.

Marshfield child + Family Center

In 2009, Children’s Home + Aid completed renovations on its former Head Start facility, at 5958 South Marshfield in Englewood. The newly renovated Marshfield Child + Family Center is now home to a wide array of programs, designed to support more than 2,600 incredibly vulnerable children and youth, along with their families. Programming includes intact and extended family support, child and family counseling, foster care services, after-school programming and violence prevention.

Programming at Children’s Home + Aid’s Marshfield Child + Family Center

Children’s Home + Aid serves 600 children and youth in the greater Englewood community through school-based after-school programming aimed at reducing violence through conflict resolution skill-building, arts and sports enrichment, academic support, and clinical counseling services (School Based Mental Health). These afterschool programs (Community Schools) are located on school grounds to ensure greater youth participation and attendance, and to ensure youth remain safe during afterschool hours. Children’s Home + Aid is the lead nonprofit partner in four kindergarten through 8th grade schools in greater Englewood: Benjamin Mays Elementary Academy, Anna R. Langford Elementary, Amos Alonzo Stagg Elementary and Charles Earle Elementary. In addition, clinical counseling services are provided at Bontemps, Hinton, Fulton, Parker, and Kershaw elementary schools.

At each school, Children’s Home + Aid offers parent engagement and support through Family Connect, a program that engages and supports families in conjunction with providing mental health services to students and their families, and Parents Care & Share, a weekly support group designed to prevent child abuse.

The Excellence Academy is an extended-day program serving 21 adolescents in foster care. The Excellence Academy provides after-school academic, social-emotional, and family support to adolescent youth in foster care placements in Englewood, ensuring that youth have the support and skills necessary to successfully transition to adulthood. The goals of the Excellence Academy are to help youth remain stable in their foster placements, graduate from high school, and secure employment or enter a post-secondary institution.

New Investments in Greater Englewood

The Department of Health & Human Service, Office of Adolescent Health recently awarded an evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention grant to Children’s Home + Aid. The 5-year grant supports replication of an evidence-based youth development and pregnancy prevention program (Carrera Adolescent Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program). This is an intensive, multi-year program which complements our work in Chicago Public Schools. Children’s Home + Aid is replicating this model in a school-based setting in Englewood and West Englewood. The 5-year project has an annual budget of $1,443,303 per year.

Evaluated by Philliber Research Associates, this model is the only national teenage pregnancy prevention program whose effectiveness has been scientifically proven. Research on the model has shown that program participants:

have lower rates of sexual activity
are less likely to become pregnant
are significantly more likely to graduate from high school or obtain a GED
are significantly more likely to enroll in college

Children’s Home + Aid is the lead agency in the Governor’s Community Violence Prevention Program, a program designed to reduce youth violence. Administered through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA), this initiative will invest $1.3 million in youth programming in Englewood. Children’s Home + Aid is partnering with other community providers to offer parent leadership, a youth employment program, and re-entry programming.

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