Tucker-based Wellroot Family Services, an agency of the United Methodist Church in North Georgia, is leading the effort to transform the lives of children and young adults, sometimes providing help even before birth.
Formerly the United Methodist Children’s Home, Wellroot for more than 150 years has provided homes for children, teens, young adults, and families. Its CEO Allison Ashe, who has been at the helm almost five years, said the organization saw the need for preventative services that could divert a crisis situation resulting in children being removed from their homes.
“What I saw when I first arrived at Wellroot was that there was a real need for prevention work, and that did, to some degree, come from my background working with youth experiencing homelessness,” Ashe said. “It just seemed like so much more could be done for families to keep them together and to keep kids out of the trauma of having to experience being in foster care.”
Four years ago, Wellroot launched its prevention services work, focusing on the entire continuum of child welfare “by preventing kids from going into child welfare, and providing recruiting, licensing, and training in foster families and supporting them extensively throughout the fostering journey.”
One of the programs, which is affiliated with Healthy Families America, identifies, sometimes even before birth, the risk factors that could result in losing a child to foster care.
Wellroots family support specialists meet with families in their homes and work with them to cultivate and strengthen parent-child relationships, promote healthy childhood growth and development, and enhance family functioning, according to Ashe.
“Once we are referred to a particular situation, we spend time walking alongside the individual,” Ashe said. “It could involve helping to finding employment, doing well visits and providing services focused on addressing the needs of the entire family.”
Wellroot cites statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that about one in five children in the United States has a diagnosed mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder, but only half of children with a mental health condition receive treatment or counseling from a qualified professional.
Founded in 1871, Wellroot Family Services opened its doors as The Decatur Orphans’ Home at the close of the Civil War to serve the needs of children who had been orphaned during the war. Over the next several decades, the needs of children and families in Georgia changed, and the organization evolved to better meet those needs.
In 2018 – after decades as the United Methodist Children’s Home – the name changed to Wellroot Family Services, reflecting both the national movement away from congregate care to foster care and its expansion into deeply rooted evidence-based services.
“Often, children and families in crisis are met with blame or judgment rather than compassion,” according a Wellroot statement. “We are driven by the belief that all are worthy and that everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed.”
Wellroot’s third “This Is Home” gala, held at Zoo Atlanta, raised $386,000, with one notable attendee, Tucker Mayor Frank Auman, making quite a splash when he admired a blue sparkly jacket worn by the event’s auctioneer, Seth Weiner.
A deal was struck: Auman made a donation to Wellroot in exchange for the jacket, with one condition, that the mayor wear it to a Tucker City Council meeting. He kept his end of the bargain on April 14, sparking admiration from his peers and compliments from public speakers.
