Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311160240
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Long
Recal ling his remark now, Herring says he had no idea how quickly his listeners would take him up on that.
Herring and Mike Hall had been with Lutheran Homes of the South in Salem when they talked about how some of the children in their institution did not really belong there. However, there were no real alternatives.
Eleven years ago, Hall left to become Wythe County's social services director. It was about that time when the Virginia Department of Social Services floated requests for proposals of better ways to serve at-risk youngsters.
Herring's board was just getting out of the institutional business, and Hall reminded him of their earlier conversations. They decided to put what they had talked about into a grant proposal.
It got funded. And that was when Herring made the remark he still remembers vividly.
A homemaker in the group had offered to go and live with one of the families in crisis and work with them on their home ground. ``Can we do that?'' Herring was asked.
He was unsure but, after checking with insurance and legal people, decided to give the go-ahead. The concept became the genesis of Lutheran Family Services.
The program provides home-based help to families at risk of having children removed from home because of behavior, emotional, legal or other problems. The staff provides counseling, crisis intervention, parent education, help with health care, nutritional, budgeting and general home-making skills and other assistance.
Its first board hired Sara Turner to run its program in Wythe County 10 years ago. Since then, its central office in Salem established programs in Bedford County in October 1985, in Tazewell County in July 1986, and is setting one up in Smyth County.
The office for the Wythe program has been housed all 10 years at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Its pastor, the Rev. Roger Kluttz who had earlier been a pastor in Roanoke, is a former member of the organization's board.
The concept of finding ways to keep families together rather than splitting them up is one that is becoming more popular at the state level, Herring said. Neighboring Pulaski County has a group working on the establishment of an emergency shelter for at-risk children with personnel who would work with families on salvaging themselves.
Hall remembered the first time a juvenile judge said he did not want the child in the case before him removed from the home. Instead he wanted the family to work with Lutheran Family Services.
The program has become an alternative resource for judges in this region, he said. ``If kids are to be successful, we need to nurture the nurturers.''
The Wythe group celebrated its first decade of community-based service at a luncheon recently.
During that time, it has served 195 families with 468 children, said Jeannie Anderson, its parent educator. Ninety-two percent of those children were able to remain in their homes rather than being put in foster homes or institutions, she said.
Turner said Herring, Hall and the Wythe social services board members went out on a limb in trying this approach.
``They took a lot of risks in getting this program started. They were real visionaries,'' she said.
Turner had worked for social services before being hired for this program, and recalled encountering a woman who had been arrested 18 years earlier when her children had been taken from her and she had threatened the authorities.
Turner said ``hello'' and asked if the woman remembered her. ``I sure do,'' the woman replied.
Was the woman still angry with her? ``I sure am,'' she said.
She was probably less angry after Turner helped her find some of the children who had been taken from her after Turner, a judge and a deputy sheriff had come to the home and observed the conditions of neglect. The father had left and the woman lacked the abilities needed to care properly for a house full of children, Turner said.
Turner contrasted that encounter with the one she had with another woman who had been assisted a year earlier through Lutheran Family Services.
That woman was in a bright mood because she had just aced an algebra test at Wytheville Community College, where she was doing well in her classes. She had one of her children with her.
``And this child that I hadn't seen for a year looks up at me and says, `I remember you. You bought me an ice cream cone,''' Turner said. ``How nice it is to work in a program where you can be remembered for buying an ice cream cone and not for sending someone to jail.''
by CNB