Endowed Funds for Kids Path Help Address Growing Counseling Need
February 28, 2013
Thanks to the combined support of eight named endowment funds, Kids Path counselors will receive expanded training to address grief that results from a traumatic loss such as an accident, homicide, suicide or sudden medical event.
“We recently audited 1,247 charts of child clients who used our services between 2007 and 2011,” said Marion Taylor, director of Kids Path. “We discovered the most dramatic shift we have witnessed since our inception – the need to assist children who have experienced a traumatic death. The chart audit revealed that 52 percent of the counseling clients were accessing our services for support of ‘traumatic grief.’ This meant that more than half of the children were seeking assistance for the loss of a significant person in their lives through accident, suicide, homicide or prolonged illness.”
Of the 648 child counseling clients identified as being at risk for traumatic grief, 18 percent lost a loved one to suicide, 10 percent lost a loved one to homicide and 24 percent lost a loved one to an accident. Of these 648 identified clients, 590, or 91 percent, had lost an immediate family member, which is shown to increase the likelihood of traumatic grief responses.
In order to provide the best support for children and teens impacted by traumatic grief, Kids Path staff began to investigate ways to enhance their skills through additional training. “We identified an outstanding training opportunity in North Carolina called the North Carolina Trauma Focused Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Learning Collaborative,” said Katie Wangelin, support services team manager at Kids Path. “This training opportunity was created by The North Carolina Child Treatment Program and is a joint effort between the Duke Evidence-based Practice Implementation Center (Duke EPIC), the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (NCCTS), the Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) and the UNC School of Medicine.”
Funding program needs like this can be difficult for a nonprofit organization. Fortunately, over the past decade, HPCG has worked to build permanent endowment funds to enable the organization to ride out economic fluctuations and to have the resources to more fully realize its mission.
As a result, eight named endowed funds have been created by donors to support Kids Path. They are the Jessica Cole Fund, the Judith F. Mincher Fund, the New Breed Fund, the Taylor Sudbrink Fund, the Terry Brantley Fund, the William and Pearl Haygood Fund, the Bob Williams Fund, and the Senn Dunn Fund. Together, their combined assets are valued at $228,254.45. This year the distribution from these funds total $8,379 and will be used to pay for this vital training.
If you’re interested in creating a named, endowed fund, please contact Paul Russ, vice president of marketing and development at 336.621.2500 or [email protected].
HPCG, a nonprofit organization serving Greater Greensboro for more than 30 years, is situated on an eight-acre campus at 2500 Summit Avenue. HPCG provides physical, emotional and spiritual support for children and adults faced with a life-limiting illness, as well as their caregivers and families. For more information, contact HPCG at 336.621.2500 or visit www.hospicegso.org.
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