{"id":6313,"date":"2015-11-04T13:51:33","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T19:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gnof.org\/?p=6313"},"modified":"2015-11-11T09:44:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T15:44:12","slug":"raintree-house-helps-foster-children-feel-like-regular-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/raintree-house-helps-foster-children-feel-like-regular-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Raintree House Helps Foster Children Feel Like &#8216;Regular Kids&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/231541676&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nRaintree House provides quality services to adolescent females between the ages of 10 to 17 years old who are in need of a therapeutic treatment program. Raintree House offers more restrictions than a foster home, but less restrictions than a residential facility or hospital. Raintree operates in conjunction with the the Department of Children and Family Services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of girls not used to being in foster care, but I\u2019m used to it,\u201d says Erica, who\u2019s been in foster care for around a dozen years. \u201cI don\u2019t have a problem with saying: oh, I\u2019m a foster child. I\u2019m a foster child. What\u2019s the problem with that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Erica is 17, and for the last nine months, she\u2019s lived in a big house \u2013 she calls it a mansion \u2013 with other girls and a very supportive staff. Erica says her home, Raintree, doesn\u2019t feel like a group home.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>I feel like a regular kid at a house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cheyenne, who lives at Raintree with Erica pipes in: <strong>\u201c<\/strong>I agree with what Erica\u2019s saying because when I first got here, I was like: when I leave, I\u2019m gonna be like: Yeah, I\u2019m packing up my bags and I\u2019m gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cheyenne is 15. She\u2019s lived at Raintree for three years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>It\u2019s kinda like a family,\u201d explains Cheyenne. \u201cWhen Erica leaves, I\u2019m a cut up. I\u2019m gonna cry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>Like we can all fuss and fight, but like when we get together, we can have fun,\u201d says Erica. \u201cWe forget that we just fuss. We still sisters. We\u2019re not blood sisters, but we sisters at Raintree. And like Ms. Jo says, we are our sisters\u2019 keeper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Jo is also Mama Jo, aka, Joakima Blanc, the program supervisor at Raintree.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>There is something positive in every girl,\u201d declares Blanc. \u201cAnd we try to bring that out more and more. We do things that ordinary facilities don\u2019t do. We just came back from vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which was on the beach in Alabama.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>Other group homes don\u2019t go on vacations,\u201d explains Cheyenne. \u201cThey don\u2019t give children a chance to feel normal, to act like a child. And we had our own beach house and stuff. It was nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Normal is a big word for Cheyenne and Erica, and they made sure I knew that\u2019s how living at Raintree feels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>In this group home, I\u2019m older, they trust me,\u201d says Erica. \u201cI can go, I can walk, I can do things that a normal kid can do. I can do things like go to my high school football game or something like that. As far as the other group I couldn\u2019t do that. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just like a feeling. Like you just feel normal. It\u2019s just a feeling I feel. I know I feel normal because I have this. It\u2019s normal. It\u2019s like a life. It\u2019s not like a group home, like a building with keys and doors and a staff watching you 24\/7. It\u2019s freedom. It really is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>It\u2019s like a home,\u201d Cheyenne adds. \u201cIt\u2019s like another family you never had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>And the staff too,\u201d pipes in Erica. \u201cThe staff is like some aunties and some grandmas. We have this one staff \u2013 this overnight staff and she\u2019s like a grandma to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Erica\u2019s lived in foster homes, with parents and a few kids, but she says group homes, especially Raintree, are better.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>I feel like a group home is just like better because the staff can pay more attention to you. They have peers that\u2019s around you that\u2019s your age, that\u2019s been going through what you\u2019re going through. They have counselors that come and see you. They help you with coping skills.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And also life skills like how to make a bed, wash clothes, and cook pancakes and eggs. (Cheyenne loves cooking breakfast.) Raintree has been around since 1926. It started as the protestant home for babies, and as the needs in the community changed, so did the services they offer. The sprawling home \u2013 or mansion, according to Erica \u2013 sits in the Garden District next to a huge tree, a rain tree, which is how this normal home got its name.<\/p>\n<p><em>Written by Eve Abrams for the Community IMPACT Series and produced by WWNO in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Learn more about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.raintreeservices.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Raintree Children &amp; Family Services<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raintree House provides quality services to adolescent females between the ages of 10 to 17 years old who are in need of a therapeutic treatment program. Raintree House offers more restrictions than a foster home, but less restrictions than a residential facility or hospital. Raintree operates in conjunction with the the Department of Children and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":6314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677,30],"tags":[350,130,666,289,111,326,945,946,100],"class_list":["post-6313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-front-page-small-feature","category-our-community","tag-community-impact","tag-community-impact-series","tag-eve-abrams","tag-grant","tag-grantmaking","tag-human-services","tag-raintree","tag-social-servies","tag-wwno"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Raintree House Helps Foster Children Feel Like &#039;Regular Kids&#039; | Greater New Orleans Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/raintree-house-helps-foster-children-feel-like-regular-kids\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Raintree House Helps Foster Children Feel Like &#039;Regular Kids&#039; | Greater New Orleans Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Raintree House provides quality services to adolescent females between the ages of 10 to 17 years old who are in need of a therapeutic treatment program. 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