Helping youth in need Catholic Charities Safe Place for Kids supports Department of Children's Services

By Gabrielle Nolan

In Knox County, children in custody with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) need a safe place to sleep at night.

A November report by WBIR10News revealed that children were sleeping in DCS offi ces due to a lack of placement resources, such as foster homes or shelters, in addition to DCS staffi ng shortages.

Knox County Juvenile Court Judge Tim Irwin believes there has been a problem since the initial COVID epidemic.

“The Department of Children ’ s Services has been severely shortstaffed,” Judge Irwin explained. “They’re down, currently, 46 percent of their workforce. The agencies that contract with the department are also down signifi cantly, and what this does is results in less people to do the work of investigating foster-care supervision (and) placement.”

Judge Irwin, a parishioner of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, is entering his 18th year as a judge.

“You don’t get bogged down with statistics and numbers,” he said. “It’s a one-child-at-a-time business, and you do the best you can for every kid that appears in front of you, no matter what the circumstances are. You use all the resources that you can muster.”

“Sometimes, lately, we’ve been running out of resources, and that’s tragic,” Judge Irwin said. “To say the system has almost collapsed would not be inaccurate.”

Catholic Charities of East Tennessee, a partner with the Department of Children’s Services, offered their services to aid children in need through their Columbus Home Safe Place for Kids, which opened in April 2022.

“While everybody else is step- ping away, Catholic Charities stepped up to help our department and help our youth in a time of dire need,” Judge Irwin said. “The work at Catholic Charities Safe Place has just come up and knocked it out of the ballpark to help some of our kids that need the help the most.”

Columbus Home Safe Place for Kids

Lisa Healy, executive director of Catholic Charities of East Tennessee, noted the staffi ng shortage for DCS and the “great resignation” that has happened throughout the country post-COVID.

“It’s been really, really tough for

DCS to do what they do, but they do it with great care and they do it the best that they can. We really are a very proud partner of, fi rst and foremost, our children in Knox County and [Knoxville], but with the Department of Children’s Services and with the juvenile court,” Mrs. Healy said. “Any way that we can help them, if we can do it, we’re going to do it.”

Judge Irwin and DCS approached Mrs. Healy last year asking if they had a space to safely host children in need.

“Columbus Home Safe Place for Kids is a new program that Catholic Charities opened in response to the need of children in Knox County,” she continued. “These kids are already in the custody of the Department of Children’s Services.”

Judge Irwin noted that Safe Place for Kids is not used for treatment or rehabilitation but is a temporary solution “until we can fi nd [the children] a permanent placement bed for them to stay and get the services that they need.”

“Catholic Charities has stepped up during this time in order to keep kids from sleeping on the fl oor of the DCS offi ces and has come up with safe places to enable the kids to go stay in more of a home environment with a worker there,” Judge Irwin said. “It makes it much easier, and it’s much more suitable for shortterm stays.”

Catholic Charities’ Safe Place for Kids has a dual space where children in DCS custody can safely stay and DCS employees can work near the children.

For the children, there is a desk to do homework, and there is availability for a tutor; there are movies and video games to enjoy; there is a kitchenette where the children can help themselves to

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Victor Ashe Park