Visitor and Guest Guidelines
A major focus of a local outreach will be to help the children in the local area. This help can come in many forms including food, clothing, housing, donations, and counseling. It is recognized that helping the children will often require helping the parents.
Importance of Family
A primary belief of the Mission is that children are better off with their parents than in the foster care system. One of the reasons children end up in the foster care system is when a parent is unable to care for the child, sometimes even for one night. In an effort to keep families together, emergency and short term guest stay is made available at the campus. This guest status can last up to two months during which time the family involved should be working to find somewhere else to go and improving whatever situation has placed them there.
Focusing on Children
Many local outreaches will have the facilities to give temporary housing to children who are in need. This housing will be available to the child(ren) and the parent(s) / guardian(s) with them. As there are many possible and unusual circumstances which cannot be predicted, the trustees have the discretion to decide if any individual case does help a child. Such examples could include a pregnant woman or a person / couple trying to regain custody of their children. Generally favor should be given to the choice to help. Single men, single women, or couples without children will be outside the scope of this outreach.
Why Guests Need Help
There are many possible reasons why a family would need a temporary place to live. A business might close down and causes a father to be unable to pay his rent and has difficulty finding a new job. A mother may have an unpaid court fine and go to jail and need a full-time babysitter for three days. The recent economic situation is poor. Accidents happen.
It is assumed that most, if not all guests, coming through the local outreach will be having a crisis in their lives at the time of coming (otherwise they would not be there). Therefore, every effort should be made to provide a peace, safe, and comfortable environment. It should be a stable place where they can start working on their problems and not be distracted by little details in life. None the less, they should have their responsibility in caring for themselves such as washing their own dishes, preparing most of their own meals, doing their own laundry. There should be no financial requirements of guest who are in this crisis period.
Orientation and Instruction
All incoming guests should receive a full orientation program. This includes explaining the host / guest relationship, explaining what type of help is available, what is expected, and what should be avoided. It should be very clear that help is available but they must show they want it by asking for it. This should include a printed calendar marked as a visual reminder of their goals and when their two months are up.
Inactive / Problematic Guests
There are those who are lazy and would want to settle in and live long term without any responsibility. This type of action should be discouraged and efforts made not to have guests want to settle permanently.
Potential Guest to Volunteer
In the event that a guest has shown significant improvement and responsibility and also desires to stay at the campus for further education and improvement, they can take on a position of on-site volunteer and then help the campus. Such an individual must still go through an interview and evaluation process and can be turned down if they have not shown themselves responsible or trustworthy.
Guest Room Privacy
Guests will be allowed to have keys to their private rooms (to help prevent thefts and disputes). However, they should understand that the trustees and/or family hosts with trustee permission will have a master key to enter any room if there is an emergency, court order, police search, maintenance requirement, or need for an unexpected inspection.
Minimize Dating
Dating and romantic types of relationships should be discouraged from forming with other guests during their stay. The main reasoning is that this is a difficult and vulnerable time in life full of big changes and stress. During such times, people may not be making wise decisions because of high emotion.
| Encouraging Life Children's Mission Summary | |
|---|---|
| Poverty | |
| Mission |
Motto, Goals, Vision, Mission, Outreaches, Statement of Faith, Partners |
| Outreaches |
Objectives, Operations, Buildings, Training, Staff, Volunteers, World, |
| Services | |
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