The Presbyterian Home for Children, a new covenant partner with the Synod of Living Waters, has added a new program that will help ensure unaccompanied immigrant minors coming to Alabama are being placed in safe housing.
The Home that is based in Talladega, Alabama, has joined the national Caminos® program through a contract with nonprofit Everstand in Baltimore, Maryland, and the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Through this new contract, the Home is filling a growing need in the state of Alabama to ensure private homes are safe for migrant children who are placed with relatives living in communities throughout the state, primarily in Jefferson, Marshall, Mobile and Baldwin counties.
“Young and vulnerable children from all over the world face continued exploitation, abuse, and trafficking in the United States,” PHFC President and CEO Doug Marshall said. “Currently, there are very limited resources to protect these children in Alabama. The Presbyterian Home for Children is opening the Caminos® program because we believe all of God’s children deserve the love of Christ in a safe, welcoming, home environment.”
The Home has been staffing up in recent months to be ready to take on cases that task social workers with providing in-home placement support and post release services for children who entered the United States without a guardian and are placed with a sponsor family already in Alabama.
This type of work is not new to the Home. For seven years, PHFC’s Family Bridges program has been helping stabilize families in crisis in their homes across seven counties in east central Alabama through a contract with the Department of Human Resources.
The Home recently hired a director to oversee the Caminos program. Adalis Ortiz-Vega has been named program director for Caminos®, and she considers the job a calling that fits with her passion for giving children in need the right tools to be healthy and happy.
“I want to be there for kids as they are growing into adulthood and help those who have been traumatized and be a part of their healing,” she said. “They are our most vulnerable population, and they need us. We need to protect them as much as we can.”
Ortiz, a Puerto Rican native, comes to the Caminos® program with a wealth of experience working with bilingual youth and teens as a licensed mental health counselor and therapist in Florida, Nebraska, Texas and New York City.
She will be based out of the Home’s Caminos® office in Birmingham, which is located at the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley building.
As she gets the program started, Ortiz is hiring bilingual social workers to go into the homes and make sure the living conditions are safe.
Ortiz has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Universidad del Turabo in Puerto Rico and master’s in Mental Health Counseling from Bellevue University in Nebraska, as well as a master’s in pastoral counseling from Liberty University.
Ortiz had a challenging childhood herself, having witnessed domestic violence and abuse with her own parents and fights, shootings and drug deals at her family’s bar they owned. She came to the United States for her education and – as a mother of two little girls – vowed to help other children fulfill the right to have a healthy homelife and “live in peace, feeling protected and loved.”
“These immigrant children have experienced trauma before, during and after their journey,” she said. “They have experienced domestic violence, physical abuse, sex trafficking, family separation, death. They have been threatened for money. Gangs try to recruit them. And there is trauma here, including racism and language barriers.”
Ortiz’s vision is to establish the Home’s Caminos® program with the highest quality standards to provide the youth with strong roots to continue growing. The program will safely unify them with the family member located by ORR and prepare them to be part of their new community.
“They will be here anyway, and they were not safe in their country,” Ortiz said. “Our home visits will make sure they are safe and happy. That is my wish.” Participating in the Caminos® program is congruent with the Home’s 156-year mission of providing hope and healing to at-risk children in need.
for more information: https://phfc.org/family-services/caminos/