Generous Hearts by Susan Bonnett Bourgeois
Methodist Children’s Home of Southeast Louisiana
Building a Future for Louisiana’s Children
HERE IN SOUTH LOUISIANA, we have a startling rate of children in need of hope and healing, and for many of them, options are limited. In fact, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which focuses on improving the life of America’s children, has ranked the state 49th in overall childhood wellbeing. But there is hope. For this Inside Northside Home & Garden issue, we wanted to feature a different kind of “home” and also one of our member nonprofits that has been working on this problem for more than a century. Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services is a statewide organization dedicated to improving the mental health and general welfare of Louisiana’s children and families. Though it began as an orphanage over 120 years ago, LUMCFS has grown and evolved, and today, it provides levels of care through many different programs, including three residential treatment facilities, and a new one is on the way. In February 2022, LUMCFS will open a brand new, state-of-the-art facility for its Methodist Children’s Home of Southeast Louisiana, marking the beginning of a historic expansion of its services 72
Inside Northside
in this region—an area in which half of the state’s children and families in need live. Originally located in New Orleans, this Children’s Home facility was forced to close after Hurricane Katrina, and the children in care evacuated to the North Louisiana campus in Ruston before eventually settling in a temporary space in Mandeville. In 2015, LUMCFS purchased 123 acres of land on the northshore for the comprehensive new facility, which has the capacity to nearly double the number of children in care each year. It has been specially designed to
