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What's New:
New resource center helps
connect families
By Erica Kritt, Carroll
County Times Staff writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Get Connected Family
Resource Center is a new program
that has helped a child with
autism find a place to get his
hair cut, helped a mother with
depression and provided a family
with social networks to join.
The service is free to all
Carroll County children and
adults up to age 25 and their
families.
Alyssa Taylor-Free of Hampstead
needed to find something for her
9-year-old daughter Alivia to do
this summer.
“I was at wit’s end,”
Taylor-Free said. “I felt she
needed to get out of the house
and be around people her age.”
Taylor-Free contacted Get
Connected, and the employees
found a camp for Alivia to
attend.
The employees at the center are
called family navigators, and
they work with each family to
provide resources to meet their
needs.
“The idea is to make it so that
they are not doing all the
running around and getting doors
closed in their faces,” family
navigator Rhonda Johnson said.
The navigators have dealt with
difficulty in their own lives.
For example, one of the
employees dealt with depression
in her family, while another has
raised a child with a
developmental disability.
“You feel like a failure as a
parent and you think that people
are going to judge you,” program
director Laura Rhodes said. “We
won’t do that here because we’ve
all been through that
ourselves.”
In the past two weeks, Johnson
estimated the center has
received 30 calls. Get Connected
came about from a growing
complaint in the county, Rhodes
said.
“Parents were getting very
frustrated when they were trying
to find services for their
children, and there are lots of
services out there, but parents
have no idea where to look, who
to call,” Rhodes said.
The Local Management Board,
which promotes the well being of
children, got funding from the
state to provide a grant for the
program.
Granite House was awarded the
contract to implement Get
Connected as an independent
program.
The organization is slated to
receive $118,286 for this year,
according to Mary Scholz,
manager of the Carroll County
Local Management Board.
Get Connected also has a
computer station available for
parents and children to use, a
lending library and a culture
navigator to help foreign
parents learn what is available.
“What they are used to from
their home countries is a lot
different from what’s available
here,” Rhodes said. “[The
cultural navigator] will help
explain anything to them, yes
you can call the school system
and challenge them, yes you can
call the police for this or that
issue or how to open a checking
account.”
www.carrollcountytimes.com
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