About Hephzibah

Our Mission

Hephzibah is Oak Park’s oldest social service agency. Our mission is to help children thrive and families flourish through innovative, community-based programs.

Hephzibah’s Programs:

  • Hephzibah Home, a therapeutic residential treatment program for young children ages 3-11
  • Foster care services for children  and their foster families
  • Foster Parent Training & Licensing
  • Intensive case management and support services for families in crisis
  • A positive parenting abuse and neglect prevention program
  • After school care and summer day camp for Oak Park elementary school children

Our Core Values

Commitment to Children and Families

Our first and primary responsibility is to the children and families we are privileged to serve. With a spirit of service to others, we inspire hope and nurture personal growth. We are committed, compassionate, and creative in our support for each child and family.

Respect

Our actions and words exemplify respect in our relationships with others. We listen attentively, seek to understand, and affirm the dignity of each person with whom we interact, even when we disagree. We are considerate, courteous, and kind.

Honesty and Integrity

Our actions and words exemplify the highest standards of honesty and integrity, daily earning the trust and confidence of our clients, employees, funders, and stakeholders. We are transparent about our challenges, and prompt in executing improvements. We are both fair and straightforward in our dealings with others.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We value, advocate for and support diversity throughout all levels of our organization. We embrace a respectful, multicultural, and inclusive environment for employees and the clients we serve. We challenge and are attentive to bias and discrimination. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive culture that solicits multiple perspectives and views and is welcoming to all.

Accountability

We are accountable to our clients, community, funders, stakeholders, and each other. We are careful stewards of the resources entrusted to our use and work diligently to be both efficient and effective. We measure our impact, utilize the findings to improve our programs and practices, and communicate results to stakeholders. Each employee, foster or adoptive parent, volunteer, and board director is personally accountable for their conduct, performance, and effectiveness, and collectively preserves the organization’s reputation for excellence.

Learning and Improvement

We learn by listening carefully to our clients, staff, and stakeholders. We actively acquire new knowledge, test new ideas, and apply best practices. We critically examine our assumptions and methods and are open to new and better ways of doing things. We strive for excellence in all we do.

Stability and Innovation

Our organizational strength and stability is the firm bedrock from which we both securely serve children and families in the present and develop innovative programs for the future. In search of even better ways to help children and families, we constantly push the bounds of current practice, utilize the best available research, and apply state of the art programs and methods. We are both disciplined and flexible, attending to the fundamentals of sound practice while at the same time identifying, developing, and implementing promising innovations.

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