Cedars Youth Services announces capital campaign

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BY MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star

The numbers tell part of the  story at 6601 Pioneers Boulevard.

It’s a story of children in crisis, of 382 young people who stayed at  Cedars Youth Services emergency shelter last year and of the more than 1,300 cases of abuse and neglect in Lancaster County in 2006.

It’s also a story is about changing times and changing needs, which make the shelter that’s been the cornerstone of the organization’s services since 1953 due for an upgrade.

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A drawing of the Cedars Youth Services addition. (Davis Design)

A drawing of the Cedars Youth Services addition. (Davis Design)

And so, that’s the plan, and organization leaders are asking for help from the community to build a $3.5 million addition.

On Wednesday, Cedars Youth Services officials kicked off the $2 million Room to Grow capital campaign to raise money from private donations for the two-story addition. Cedars is working to secure the other $1.5 million from federal grants.

 Plans for the addition grew out of a two-year facilities plan for the organization that eventually includes moving the central offices their current location at 620 N. 48th St. to the original building on Pioneers.

All the money raised, however, will be used for the 17,000-square-foot addition, said Cedars President Jim Blue.

“We decided that our No. 1 priority is that we create a new environment for the kids who are in that immediate crisis of abuse and neglect and homelessness,” he said.

 The existing building is adequate but outdated, he said. Built at the tail end of the orphanage movement, when the philosophy of child welfare was to place children in large group living situations, children often were raised there until they were eventually adopted.

But the long hallways, old staffing stations and individual rooms don’t meet the needs of today’s system, which tries to get children as quickly as possible back into their homes or into stable foster care, Blue said.

The new building will have a more open design, as well as room for family counseling and for children to meet with families or prospective foster families. It will have an indoor recreation area to replace the existing area, which is in an old nuclear fallout shelter in the basement. And it will include areas for group and individual study and for tutoring.

 The addition will increase the capacity of the building — the only emergency shelter in southeast Nebraska — from 16 to 27.

The addition will include 12 bedrooms on the second floor for older children. They will be single bedrooms and all but one handicap-accessible room will have the capacity for double occupancy when the need arises, Blue said.

Downstairs will be four bedrooms for younger children with more living space to create a more homelike environment. That space can also be used for family visits with children.

 Blue said the average stay of children in the shelter is about two weeks, but can be just a couple of days or as long as a month.

Cedars has grown considerably since its story began in 1947 with one child living on the streets and a Lincoln couple who wanted to help.

The Rev. Charles and Alberta Danner offered their home to children, then bought a farmhouse at 66th and Pioneers and incorporated their efforts into Cedars Home for Children.

Cedars merged with Youth Service System in 1996; the non-profit organization has 27 programs in Lincoln, Broken Bow and North Platte that include a range of housing for children, juvenile diversion, child care and in-home family services.

Blue says the addition to the emergency shelter builds on the organization’s original mission.

“This is right at the core of what Cedars does today and what it did when it began 61 years ago,” he said.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.