Gina Yonko

Author: Jim McIntyre, CBS Radio

The ribbon has been cut for phase one of the “Protect the Promise” expansion at Providence House.

The crisis nursery opened its doors 31 years ago, providing a safe haven for babies and children in imminent danger. It gives the children a place to be loved and cared for while their parents are getting the help they need.

President and CEO Natalie Leek-Nelson was joined by Mayor Frank Jackson, Councilman Joe Cimperman and Santa Claus at the ribbon cutting.

Sister Hope Greener, who founded Providence House in 1981 was also at the ribbon cutting.

The first phase of the project included renovating Leo’s House and adding a new wing. The expansion will allow older siblings of the children being cared for at Providence House stay under the same roof with their younger brothers and sisters.

Author: Regina Brett, The Plain Dealer

Babies need your help.

Living, breathing, crying babies.

I thought of them when I read that Ohio Senate Republicans are moving forward with yet another anti-abortion bill, this time “heartbeat” legislation that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is heard.

When it comes to helping babies, let’s do more to help the ones who have already arrived in this world, who turn into homeless children who show up at Providence House with all their belongings in a blue plastic bag.

Sometimes they arrive with no shoes.

The motto of the crisis nursery for newborns to 6-year-olds is this:

Every child is your child.

What would happen if we all believed that?

We’d break out our checkbooks and credit cards and tackle the Wish list at provhouse.org/

It broke my heart to see this item listed: Child-sized rolling suitcases.

I asked the CEO of Providence House, Natalie Leeks-Nelson, about that need.

“A lot of our children arrive with just the clothes on their back,” she said. “We give them each five new sets of clothes to take with them when they leave. We don’t want to send them out with another blue grocery bag.”

The first days the children are at Providence House, they pack that suitcase every night with their new clothes. Their little lives have been disrupted from evictions and violence and parent hospitalizations so many times, they’re afraid they’ll have to pack up and leave at any minute.

Two little girls who are 2 and 3 stay here when their mom is in the hospital. She’s dying of leukemia. A third of the children who come here are homeless; nearly a fourth of them have a parent with a medical need; the rest come from violent homes or have parents with mental health problems.

While you’re out doing holiday shopping, shop for them. They could use:

Tennis shoes, sizes 5 to 13. Boys and girls clothing, sizes 6, 7, and 8.

Size 5 and 6 diapers. Educational toys. Floor puzzles with large pieces. The shelter also needs things to care for the children.

“Bleach and paper towels are like gold,” Natalie said.

Donate event passes for the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo & Rainforest, Lake Metroparks Farmpark, Children’s Museum and PlayhouseSquare so they can go to children’s plays.

If it’s easier, just send a gift card from Giant Eagle, Dave’s supermarket, Target or Babies R Us. If you can be especially generous, get twin bed mattresses, or toddler/ crib mattress or help cover the addition they’re building to house more children and help children up to 10 years old

“Every, every, every gift matters,” Natalie said.

So does every baby.

Drop the gifts off at Providence House at 2037 W. 32nd St. in Cleveland from 9 to 5 weekdays and from 9 to 1 p.m. on weekends. For information, call 216-651-5982 or email info@provhouse.org

If you want to help pregnant women who choose not to have an abortion, support Maggie’s Place. For information on this home for expectant moms in Parma, check out maggiesplace.org/ or call 440-886-2620.

There’s also Laura’s Home, a crisis shelter for women and children run by the City Mission. They need diapers, pull-ups, baby wipes and baby formula. They could also use twin sheets, pillowcases, towels and washcloths.

They have a registry online where you can buy pink boots for a little girl, Cars underwear for a little boy, strollers and car seats. Call 216-472-5500 or go to thecitymission.org/lauras-home

Birthright centers all over Ohio need clothes and items for newborns. You can locate them online at birthright.org or in the phone book.

Cleveland Pregnancy Center at 2038 West 29th St. in Cleveland and 50 N. Rocky River Dr. in Berea could use help. Call 216-631-0964 or 440-243-2520 or go to clevelandpregnancyhelp.org/

They need infant formula, diapers, wipes, baby clothing, bottles, new cribs and mattresses, strollers, swings and bassinets.

Babies all over the area are crying out for help.

It doesn’t take a fetal monitor to detect their need.

To reach Regina Brett: rbrett@plaind.com, 216-999-6328

reginabrett.com

Facebook: facebook.com/ReginaBrettFans

Twitter: @ReginaBrett

The Providence House in Cleveland offers assistance to parents who are going through a crisis.

“Typically moms call because they’re homeless or utilities have been turned off. Mom needs support for her own mental health needs,” says Education Manager Summer Wiggins.

Wiggins helps to get mothers the help they need, 10-to-15% of those people are teen moms looking for a place for their children to temporarily stay while they get their lives back together.

“We understand that sometimes parenting is difficult, and if you’re not aware of the resources that are out there sometimes it can be stressful,” says Wiggins.

Wiggins says that’s when it’s time to admit you can’t do it alone. She says that it can be scary for a lot of people, but, the bottom line is to do what’s right for your child.

“Kind of overcome those fears that you have of putting yourself out there and making people understand that you don’t have it all together right now and you need some help.”

For more information on the Providence House call (216) 651- 5982.

Copyright 2012 WOIO. All rights reserved.

Author: Ben Westhoff, AB ’99

Many parents are fortunate enough to have a support system for their children. If there’s an emergency, they can count on family or friends to look after their young ones. But some parents are not so lucky, and any disruption — from an eviction to a trip to the hospital for surgery — can threaten to throw the family into chaos.

Emily Shurilla, MSW ’05, is program director for Providence House, a crisis nursery in Cleveland dedicated to filling this void. The agency provides temporary shelter and daily care for children whose families are experiencing a crisis, as well as case management, parent education, trauma services and basic need items for the adults. “If I had children and needed surgery, I would call my mom and ask, ‘Could you please watch them for a few days?’” Shurilla says. “But not everyone has that option, so we’re able to provide that service.”

Hailing originally from New Springfield, Ohio, the 33-year-old interned and then worked part time for the St. Louis Crisis Nursery during her first year at the Brown School in 2004. The nursery made a major impact. Upon moving back to Cleveland, Shurilla joined Providence House as a child-care volunteer in 2006 and began in her current role in 2007. The center cares for up to 10 children at a time — from newborn through age 6 — and Shurilla’s daily obligations vary widely.

“Today I fielded inquiries about volunteering with the agency, spoke to a PhD in New York about a new therapeutic intervention, went to Target to pick up baby clothes, and spent an hour caring for an 8-day-old infant when the rest of the staff and children went for a walk,” she says, adding that she’s also responsible for overseeing the child-care staff and other obligations. “You have to be really flexible,” she adds.

Parents’ reasons for needing Providence House’s services vary widely: Some are homeless, some have had their utilities turned off. Because of the housing slump, some have been forced from their homes after their landlords were foreclosed on. Many have medical needs requiring in-patient surgery and major recovery, while still others are undertaking mental health or drug and alcohol programs.

“If mom can’t get treatment because she has no one to take care of her children, that family’s at huge risk for disruption down the road,” Shurilla says.

The facility’s license allows children to stay for up to 60 days in most cases, but the average stay is less than a month. Providence House, which was founded in 1981 and runs mainly on private donations, also provides access to social workers and other care providers.

Shurilla says her time at Washington University benefited her career in ways both practical and philosophical. “The course work helped me establish a framework for thinking about issues, such as poverty, and for understanding the population I would work with — and it taught me how to write a grant,” she says.

Currently she and many others at Providence House are focused on a vast expansion. Based out of two nearby houses in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, Providence House is undergoing a 6,000-square-foot addition to one of the homes, which will allow the agency to care for up to 20 children at a time. The agency is also seeking to secure licensing to care for children up to the age of 10. Other plans still in the feasibility phase include the opening of a medical crisis nursery.

Despite the difficult, and often traumatic, situations that bring people to her, Shurilla finds her responsibilities to be fulfilling. The parents have made the difficult decision to leave their children in Providence House’s care, which shows they’re working hard to create a more stable family environment. And though she sometimes gets frustrated with the more bureaucratic elements of her job, she knows of an easy fix. “All I have to do is walk down to the floor where the children are, because they remind me why I’m doing the work I’m doing.”

Ben Westhoff, AB ’99, is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

Author: Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer

Natalie Leek-Nelson doesn’t look at the world in a normal way. Artists, teachers and gifts from God are like that, and she’s been called all three.

The first two are easily documented: A Cleveland Institute of Art sheepskin in fine arts covers the initial description, and coursework in education at Baldwin Wallace means there’s no need for a snopes.com sniff test on the second.

But that third descriptor, arguably the most important when it comes to the woman who is president and chief executive officer of the crisis nursery Providence House, may be the most undeniable.

Why? Because it comes from Sister Hope Greener, who founded Providence House 31 years ago, when a mother in need came knocking on her door. The location of that door — still part of the Providence House complex — isn’t common knowledge, for safety reasons.

“Natalie is God’s providence,” said Sister Greener, who now lives in the Congregation of St. Joseph community in Rocky River.

“She graduated from our [St. Joseph] Academy, and when I was on the board of the academy many moons ago, she was also on the staff,” Sister Greener said.

When the previous director at Providence House died of cancer, Leek-Nelson, who’d been serving as a consultant under an interim director, took over as boss.

It’s sort of what you expect from a woman who lives by the credo “Never let the opportunity in a good crisis pass you by.” That’s why now, under her stewardship, Providence House has morphed from a place that took care of kids to a place that puts families first.

“In our first 20 years of operation of our 31 . . . we were a safe haven for babies to come,” said Leek-Nelson, 44, who lives in Rocky River with her husband, Steve, and their two boys, Connor and Corey. “We weren’t doing a lot of the care we do with kids now, and we were doing NONE of the family program.”

That family program is Leek-Nelson’s pet project, and it has not been easy. When the program, which requires parental involvement, began a a decade ago, social-service agencies pretty much pooh-poohed the idea. The agencies believed that parents in such straits that would require them to “dump” their kids, as some saw it, rarely were capable of or willing to change.

Those agencies have been proven wrong, more often than not.

“We’re reunifying 95 percent of our families, and family compliance is 90 [percent] to 95 percent,” Leek-Nelson said.

Part of that is a desire to break the chain of abuse and abandonment that often leads to foster care. Third- and fourth-generation parents who were raised in the system are coming to Providence House with one goal:

“They’re coming to us and saying, ‘Not MY baby. No more. I’m done,’ ” Leek-Nelson said. “They don’t need a handout; they need a hand-up.”

A business mind in nonprofit world

“Natalie is a visionary,” said Gareth Vaughan, chairman of Providence House’s board of trustees and president of the Albert M. Higley Co.

“She has taken the agency from a smaller, boutique agency to one that is nationally recognized. She’s brought a sense of running it like a business, not from a standpoint of making money, but organizationally.”

There’s a reason for that: Leek-Nelson spent time teaching computer arts, a job she loved, then segued into the business world, working with software developers.

Her epiphany came on a red-eye flight from a business trip in San Francisco with some colleagues. Their words showed a lack of concern for the client, as long as the product was flashy, she said.

Worse, none of what she was doing gave her the emotional lift she got from seeing the light go on over a struggling student’s head. For a while, she stayed with the company as a consultant, but she began to focus on the nonprofit sector, fortuitously for Providence House.

The Providence House board of trustees was frustrated, primarily because members, who by profession are businesspeople, didn’t speak the language of nonprofits any more than the nonprofit workers spoke the language of business. But Leek-Nelson’s diverse background made her fluent in both.

Sister Greener may be Leek-Nelson’s biggest fan.

“[Leek-Nelson] is incredibly caring of the children,” the 84-year-old nun said. “She wants to put the family back together again. To her, it’s not a job or a position; it’s a ministry.”

Leek-Nelson has as much respect and love for Sister Greener as the nun does for the protege who is taking her beloved Providence House to new levels.

“Here’s this visionary who 31 years ago wanted to do what nobody in this community knew how to do for these kids. God forbid that I’m the one who stops that from happening. She’ll haunt me!” Leek-Nelson said with a laugh of her mentor.

Leek-Nelson’s business acumen pays off in other ways. She is, as Sister Greener said and several members of her staff confirmed, committed to the children and families who find themselves on the doorstep of Providence House. But her strength may be in her ability to recognize — and navigate — the roadblocks that often derail so many “do-gooders.”

Foremost among those obstacles was the “system” itself.

“When I started here 11 years ago, we didn’t really work with the parent,” Leek-Nelson said. “We thought that the safety net was out there. What we quickly realized is that the safety net is full of holes, and it’s really hard to navigate.

“I have master’s-level social workers who have years of experience who run into walls all the time,” she said. “So imagine a mom with no resources, no transportation, no money, maybe with literacy issues, trying to navigate that same system.

“And we wonder why our families have multigenerational cycles of poverty and violence and underemployment,” she said, shaking her head.

But it’s a trend that Providence House is trying hard to reverse.

Only about 30 percent of the children who come to Providence House a first time return for additional stays. Nationally, the average is closer to 80 percent or 90 percent, Leek-Nelson said.

“But that’s because they get 48 or 72 hours with the kids,” she said. “We get 30 to 60 to 90 days, so we can really dig in.”

Serving as many kids as the program can

Who are the people whose children wind up in Providence House? It’s not who you might think.

“A lot of people think these are poor, black kids from the inner city,” Leek-Nelson said. “They’re not. . . . Sure, there’s a concentration in the near East and near West sides, but we also have kids from Shaker [Heights] and from West Park. West Park is our No. 1 referral community.”

The need for such a place is as obvious as it is sad. Statistically, Cuyahoga County ranks tops in the state with about 21,000 calls annually to report abuse and neglect of children — and Ohio is No. 8 nationwide.

“What you see reported is about 50 percent of what’s really going on,” Leek-Nelson said. “You’re talking about 40,000 incidents [annually in Cuyahoga County alone] where kids are in jeopardy. We want to prevent that from happening.”

The 200 or so volunteers and staff members, such as facilities manager Bobby Richards, call Leek-Nelson “a superwoman. Somehow, she knows everything.” Still, the sheer volume of need dictates that it’s got to be more than a one-woman show.

But Leek-Nelson is bent on turning the challenge into an opportunity, right now by spearheading a $2 million, 7,000-square-foot expansion.

Part of the reason for the new structure are new state rules that more than halved the number of children Providence House could serve at any time, from 26 to 12. The other part, though, is that along with restoring those original capacity numbers — by adding bathrooms, square footage and the like — the expansion will allow Providence House to extend the age range to newborn to 10 years old; it’s currently newborn to 6. Construction on the expansion began in April, and it should be open by Thanksgiving.

It’s not been easy in these times of economic woes to operate a nonprofit. But Leek-Nelson remains committed . . . and unwavering.

“We have to raise about $1.8 million a year, from the community, from companies, from foundations [for the regular budget],” she said. “We don’t always raise what we need, and then we have to cut back.

“Then we get this $2 million challenge on top of the $1.8 million,” she said. “It would’ve been easy to say, ‘We’re just going to operate with 12 kids.’ But we said, ‘No, that’s not what we need to do. We need to be serving as many kids as we can.’ “

Here’s why:

Leek-Nelson tells the story — without tearing up — of an 18-year-old who visited the facility. The teen, who gave his name only as “Bobby,” had to persuade the staff to let him into Providence House, whose location is kept quiet to protect its young charges.

“I lived here when I was 4,” Bobby told the wary staffers. He had his fifth birthday in Providence House, complete with a party and a makeshift cake: a Hostess Ho Ho with a candle in it. The celebration came with hugs and kisses. And the Providence House specialty:

“It was the first time in my life I ever heard somebody say, ‘I love you,’ ” Bobby said.

Leek-Nelson’s own parents divorced when she was 3, but they remained respectful toward each other. It couldn’t have been easy; butcher Bob Leek was a recovering alcoholic, and some of his family “cut him off” during some of the more challenging years of his life.

“But he had seven years of sobriety before we lost him,” Leek-Nelson said. “They wrote him off and never got to enjoy those seven years with this amazing guy.”

It’s a lesson that benefits the families who come to Providence House. Natalie Leek-Nelson will never write anyone off.

Just ask the future Bobbys.

Author: Jacque Jovic, FOX 8 Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio – More than 200 volunteers will pitch in on Friday, July 20 to build a playground for the children of Providence House, an organization which offers emergency shelter and care to children at risk for abuse and neglect.

This new playground will provide a safe place to play for more than 200 at-risk children. The leaders at Providence House say children today spend less time playing outside than any previous generation in part because only 1-in-5 children live within walking distance of a park or playground. They say this lack of play not only affects physical health but also negative impacts children’s social and cognitive skills.

Volulnteers will start the day at 8:30 a.m. and the project is expected to be complete by 3:00 p.m. For more information on Providence House, visit provhouse.org.