Crisis Nursery

The News-Gazette had a recent interview with Stephanie Record, the Executive Director of the Crisis Nursery located in Urbana recently. From the mission statement on their website:

Crisis Nursery is the only emergency-based child care facility in Champaign County that is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the entire community to access with no fees or income eligibility. Besides safe shelter for children, ages birth through six, we also provide family support and parenting education to strengthen parenting skills and confidence. We believe that asking for help is a sign of strength.

From the News-Gazette interview in Legally Speaking (podcast audio here) a couple weeks ago:

Why do people come to Crisis Nursery?

Every situation that brings a family to us is unique — parental stress and feeling overwhelmed, homelessness, domestic violence that puts children in a risky situation. ... Our main goal is to provide that emergency care for them in that crisis so that kids aren't in that situation that could lead to harm. So we are preventing child abuse and neglect down the road.


Who may come and for how long?

We can serve 12 to 15 children, depending on our staffing situation for each shift, at one time. That varies based on the needs of the children. We have to have three children per one adult.

One of the benefits of the nursery is it's very easy to use our services. There aren't many barriers to accessing care. If you're in an emergency situation or a crisis situation, there's no one else you can call that can support you, and you need our help and we have space, we're going to do what we can to provide that support. We serve for an average of about eight hours. It's a flexible maximum of 72.

The interview also highlighted a couple of their other programs:

We also have the Strong Families program so we have master's-level employees in those positions that provide direct support to families who are in need and also may be struggling with perinatal or postpartum depression.

We also received a new grant ... for our prevention initiative program so we work with children, birth to three (years old), really providing support to make sure they are ready for kindergarten.

More at the full interview here. More information is also available on their website here. , including their Safe Children Program and other programs. It was one of the programs mentioned in supervisor of Cunningham Township, Danielle Chynoweth's defense of township government last year:

Cunningham Township is an essential, independent form of government serving the residents of Urbana since 1928. The office consists of two divisions: assessor and supervisor, headed by leaders elected by and directly accountable to Urbana voters. A similar structure exists in the City of Champaign Township. The assessor follows specific laws and procedures to ensure the property tax burden is fairly distributed across property owners. The supervisor provides a last safety net the poorest of the poor in Urbana and coordinates services for any resident in need. In addition, we provide essential grants to social service agencies such as Crisis Nursery, Family Services and Courage Connection.

It's one of the many ways that local government and organizations providing services for the vulnerable are often interwoven with each other. The funding issues for various local organizations can involve one or more levels of government all the way up to the federal level... and yet help a local child in need here in Champaign-Urbana today.