When children experience trauma, they begin searching for safety and comfort - for a place that's going to feel like home. A place where people who look and feel familiar will wrap loving arms around them…dry their tears…and walk with them on their journey toward recovery.
At Annie Malone Children and Family Services, we are home. Our highly trained and caring staff become like family - sometimes for only a day, while the situation stabilizes…and sometimes for much longer. We show up in whatever way our kids need us to show up.
For 135 years, Annie Malone has stood as a beacon of hope in our community. A place designed to provide for the care and safe keeping of children and families in crisis - no matter how intense or long lasting. We are home.
Currently, we serve more than 500 of the nearly 90,000 children who have been abused or neglected in Missouri each year (2019 data - Child Abuse and Neglect Annual Report - Division of Family and Children's Services). The majority of families we serve have household incomes of less than $29,000 and live in or around our neighborhood.
Most of the children who come to us arrive during a time of intensive duress. They're afraid. They have often been separated from caregivers who feel like their security blankets. We step into that gap and offer therapeutic support and a place for them to feel a sense of security in a tumultuous time.
Annie Malone staffers realize that our kids and families are often facing uphill battles. Abuse and neglect - both short- and long-term - paired with intergenerational poverty and familial mental illness do not paint a pretty picture…or offer an opportunity for "cookie cutter" support from staff who have no understanding of our kids' predicaments.
We pride ourselves on providing staff members - often folks from a nearby neighborhood - who can truly understand and empathize with our kids' and families' challenges. That single concept - "I know how you feel…I've been there…you can make it" - might be the most powerful part of Annie Malone's unique child and family support services. We get it. WE know. We care. And we are home.