Highlights from our 2020-2021 Annual Report

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Dear Friends,

At Hephzibah we like to say that meeting the changing needs of children and families is “in our DNA.”

After more than a century of helping children thrive and families flourish through economic downturns, war and social change—we were uniquely equipped to support children and families in crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our mantra during this most difficult year was “Hephzibah Strong.” Although COVID threw us some curveballs, we are proud to report that we adapted to meet every challenge as we served children and families in more ways than ever before. The takeaway? Hephzibah will always be there to meet the needs of children and families—even during a global pandemic!

Anyone with kids will tell you that parenting during the first full year of the pandemic was an exhausting experience. With entire families working and learning from home, Oak Park parents were at their wits’ end and their school-aged kids were isolated and under stimulated. To meet the vastly changed needs of these families as we moved out of the Spring 2020 lockdown, we created a safe, socially distanced summer camp and replaced our after-school daycare program with a full-day remote-learning program that offered e-learning support and supervision—as well as recreation and enrichment—for hundreds of children in elementary and middle school. Turn to page six of this report to find out more about the radical transformation of our Day Care program for parents struggling to keep their kids safe while making ends meet.

As we came to the aid of working parents and school-aged children, we were also safely caring for some of the youngest and highest-need children in the state of Illinois. Many of these survivors of severe neglect and abuse have spent their early years surrounded by unimaginable chaos. Before they found a safe haven and a place to heal at Hephzibah Home, their days were devoid of the predictable routines that lend a sense of stability and security to the lives of most children.

For these vulnerable youngsters, the disruptions of COVID—from the challenges of remote learning to the loss of community outings and in-person visits from family members and volunteers—could have been particularly destabilizing. But our deeply committed Hephzibah Home staff stepped in to save the day, working nonstop to provide intensive e-learning support and fill the lives of 43 housebound kids with love, positivity, healing therapies, healthy habits and a healthy dose of fun.

In spite of the pressures of the pandemic, we not only maintained every supportive and therapeutic service we could without violating COVID safety protocols, but also invested in new programs and initiatives to enhance the children’s overall well-being.

We incorporated a behavior analyst into our therapeutic team to gain a better understanding of the children’s more challenging behaviors and launched a series of therapeutic groups to give the children the support and insights they needed to develop stronger coping and interpersonal skills. Turn to page four to find out more about the therapeutic team’s creative use of the “pandemic pause” to help the children heal in new and novel ways.

Beyond the borders of Oak Park, our Intact Family Services team helped some of Illinois’ most fragile families make it through one of the hardest years of their lives. We hand-delivered groceries and holiday meals, wrote checks to landlords to prevent evictions, paid utility bills and offered a wide variety of intervention and prevention services to support and stabilize 191 families. Turn to page eight to learn more about our work on behalf of families in crisis—including the launch of our new Positive Parenting Program and the expansion of our Intact Family Services program to ensure that more struggling families have the support they need to thrive.

What did we learn during our year of coping with COVID? We learned that it was possible to pursue new avenues of growth and continually improve our programs and services while meeting the urgent needs of nearly 1,400 children and families during the worst public health crisis in more than a century.

We also learned about the community’s amazing capacity for generosity and kindness during this period of profound hardship.

Our work on behalf of children and families would not have been possible during the pandemic without the extraordinary generosity of our benefactors and friends. As the needs of children and families in crisis increased and expenses mounted, we reached out to the community for help—and the community responded with a spectacular show of support.

In a year when our budget seemed to continually expand to meet growing needs, we received more financial support than ever before—including more than $2.6 million in contributions from individuals, community partners, corporations and foundations.

The children at Hephzibah Home are still talking about the delicious Sunday Suppers that brightened their weekends, as well as the regular meal deliveries from Gene & Georgetti restaurant and The Paramount Group.

The families participating in our Intact Family Services program surely will not forget the turkeys and food baskets filled with all of the trimmings donated by Lou Malnati’s just in time for Thanksgiving.

We will always remember the caring community members who chased away the chill of our first COVID Christmas by purchasing, wrapping and delivering more than 3,000 gifts to brighten the holidays of the children living in our group, intact and foster homes.

Finally, we will always be grateful to the hundreds of generous sponsors and guests who turned out for our 2021 Heart of Gold Ball and transformed this virtual event into the most successful Hephzibah fundraiser of all time.

Thank you all for giving so generously of your time, talent and resources
to support the children and families we serve when they needed it most.
We are truly Hephzibah Strong because of you!