HEALING SPIRITS. NURTURING CHILDREN. SERVING COMMUNITIES. SINCE 1877.
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2006-2007 Highlights from Darlene Hewett, President & CEO
September 17, 2007
I am pleased to have the opportunity to present excerpts of the 2006-2007 Annual Report of the President to friends of the Presbyterian Children's Village. Administrative staff, program directors, department heads and supervisory staff have contributed information and data for this report. The report contains highlight information about the most significant accomplishments and events of the 2006-2007 fiscal year, including leadership changes within the organization, program development activities, and general outcomes.
The mission of the Presbyterian Children's Village is "to promote the healing of the spirits of children, families and communities broken by violence, addiction, poverty, mental illness, racism and other serious societal problems." Our challenge as an organization has been to carry out this mission in an environment of dramatic change. The needs of children and families in contemporary society are changing as are the responses from the public and private sectors to these changes.
Child Welfare Environment: The 2006-2007 fiscal year was a volatile time for the Philadelphia Child Welfare Community. In October of 2007, the Philadelphia Inquirer published the first in a series of articles identifying the deaths of over twenty children in Philadelphia whose families had cases open with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS). These articles set off a chain of events that included the resignation or termination of several top DHS officials, the appointment of new leadership for the department and public outcry that the Department of Human Services return to its primary mandate to provide for the safety and well being of Philadelphia's most vulnerable children. The response to this crisis dramatically impacted service delivery during fiscal year 2006-2007 and the events will undoubtedly continue to impact service delivery for fiscal year 2007-2008.
Despite this upheaval, the decade long trend to shift governmental resources toward prevention services for at-risk children in the hope that early intervention will protect these children from the negative effects of abuse and neglect has continued but with many more questions being raised regarding the use of these dollars. PCV has continued to support this move by providing an array of prevention services in Southwest Philadelphia. At the same time, traditional placement and in home services including residential treatment, semi-independent living, foster family and kinship care adoption and SCOH have been strengthened and modified to meet the complex needs of an increasingly traumatized population of clients. The review of the 2006-2007 year reveals that residential services, traditional community-based child welfare services were strengthened, efforts made to stabilize behavioral health services while the new prevention programs that the Village provides in Southwest Philadelphia were expanded and solidified.
PCV internal environmental forces: This was also a year of significant change within the organization. As the Village community prepared for Loren Preheim's anticipated retirement on March 2, 2007, we were stunned and saddened by this tragic death on February 14, 2007. Loren provided over three decades of strong and compassionate leadership to Presbyterian Children's Village. The Village continues to benefit from the leadership and contributions of this man who dedicated his career and so many years of his life to Presbyterian Children's Village and the children and families served.
After a year long executive search, Loren's successor was named on February 5, 2007, just a little over a week before Loren's death and I stepped into the role of President and CEO immediately following Loren's death. I was privileged to lead a strong and committed management team and a dedicated staff through a period of mourning by the organization that included a Memorial Service on March 3, 2007 that was attended by over 350 people including relatives, PCV staff and the state wide community.
That same Management Team worked tirelessly to guide the Village through a subsequent period of stabilization as the organization re-established a sense of equilibrium. In this process, Ross Dougherty, Vice President/CFO assumed increased responsibility in his areas of accountability including finance, facilities and information management. Ross has been with the Village almost eight years and in that time has brought stability and accountability in his areas of responsibility. Jane Maehl was promoted to Vice President for Programs. Jane has been at the Village over fifteen years in positions of progressive leadership responsibility. Nancy Houyoux continued in her role as Director of Human Resources and Performance Improvement in an increasingly complex environment and as the organization prepared for the fourth JCAHO survey, the first since the institution of the "unannounced" survey. Nancy has been with the Village for over ten years, first as a consultant and later joining the organization as a full time staff member.
Despite the tragedies and challenges we have faced during the last year, members of the Village community have carried out our mission by providing an array of child welfare, behavioral health, educational and prevention services for more than 9300 abused, neglected and troubled children and their families in the greater Philadelphia and surrounding area.
The 2006-2007 fiscal year was a year in which the collaborative efforts of the Board of Directors, staff, foster and kinship parents and volunteers enabled Presbyterian Children's Village to touch the lives of many. It was a year in which, despite enormous challenges and tragedies, we continued to work to fulfill the mission of the Village by bringing hope and healing to many of the clients we are privileged to serve. I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to all who contributed to our work.
Darlene Hewett
President and Chief Executive Officer
September 17, 2007
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