A little over a year ago Amy Deyo of Cabot visited the nonprofit Centers for Youth & Families' residential treatment homes on 12th Street in Little Rock.
"I knew within just a few minutes after the tour started that this was where I wanted to help," says Deyo, 35. "What the kids there have gone through, they have experienced things no one should ever have to experience. It's very rewarding to know that we are something positive in their life."
Deyo, a branch sales manager for Arvest Bank, is part of Center Corps, the Centers' volunteer organization, and chairs the group with Monika Rued. The pair were joined earlier this month by Centers donor relations manager Abby Jennings for a socially distanced and masked interview at the Centers' offices in the Freeway Medical Tower in Little Rock.
Rued, 47, is the public information officer for Arkansas State Parks. She was working for KTHV when she became involved with the Centers about 15 years ago.
"They offer a ton of resources for women and children," she says. "I get teary just thinking about it. Women and children are among the first forgotten and cast aside. Centers makes them seen and heard and feel valued, that they are not broken and can get a fresh start."
The Centers for Youth & Families was founded in 1884 as the Children's Aid Society, an orphanage founded by Elizabeth Latta Mitchell. It became the Little Rock Orphan's Home in 1907 and the Elizabeth Mitchell Memorial Home in 1947.
In 1987 the Elizabeth Mitchell Children's Center, the Junior League of Little Rock Parent Center and Stepping Stone Inc., merged to form the Centers for Youth & Families. Commonly referred to as the Centers, the organization provides help for emotionally and behaviorally disturbed youth, prevention services for at-risk children and teenagers and parenting resources for families.
Each year, the Centers serves about 6,500 people. The group's programs include three residential treatment homes in Little Rock and one in Monticello for youths healing from the trauma of abuse and neglect. The Centers provide a safe living space and therapy for survivors of human trafficking; a day school for children struggling behaviorally or mentally; a therapeutic foster care program that trains families who foster children who need extra support; outpatient counseling for families and other services.
Last year, the Centers began providing mental-health services for adult residents in Pulaski County who reside south of the Arkansas River. The move expanded services offered by the Centers to include counseling, substance abuse management and other programs.
Center Corps is the main volunteer group for the Centers.
"It's anyone from the community who wants to donate their time, talent or treasure," Jennings says.
Usually during the Christmas season, Corps volunteers throw a party and dinner for the therapeutic foster care families. The pandemic scuttled those plans for this year, of course, but volunteers still assembled goodie bags for the families, Deyo says.
Center Corps also helps find sponsors to buy items on wish lists for the 200 or so children in foster care and living at the residential homes for Christmas.
Rued and Deyo sponsored several children this year, whose items on wish lists ranged from dolls and Amazon Fire tablets, Deyo says.
Corps volunteers also put together packages for residents' birthdays.
In noncovid times, Center Corps volunteers can spend time with residents at the Little Rock and Monticello homes during game nights and other activities, though they have to sign confidentiality agreements to protect the identity of the children and complete a 30-minute training session on how to interact with the residents.
"Every story is unique," Jennings says of the residents. Some are from foster homes, others are from traditional households, but they all are working through mental or behavioral problems.
"All kids and families need support, some just need more than others," she says.
Centers, which has a staff of about 300 that includes trained mental-health professionals, has the only specialized residential treatment home in Arkansas for young human trafficking survivors, Jennings says.
January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and Centers has several events planned including a fundraising yoga class conducted by an instructor who has used yoga to help human trafficking survivors. Brandy Thomason McNair of Bella Vita Jewelry in Little Rock has created custom bracelets designed in part by survivors to raise money for the program and that will be sold at Bella Vita and other area boutiques.
The Centers' therapeutic foster care program is the state's largest, Jennings says.
"We recruit and train families who are not only willing to be foster families but are willing to take kids who need extra therapy and support."
There are about 75 families involved in the program, she says.
"The level of commitment of these families to say, yes, we will take on the responsibility of helping this child heal and help them be the person they were meant to be is amazing," Rued says. "They give up so much of their lives for these children who desperately need someone to love and care for them."
For Deyo, becoming a Center Corps volunteer has been "very rewarding. We are showing kids that there are people who care about them. Even though they have gone through these horrible events in their lives, we are there to help turn it around so that they can go into adulthood and have a successful, happy life."
For information about volunteering with Center Corps, visit thecentersar.com, email
[email protected] or call (501) 666-9436.