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PAM BELLCK, NY TIMES - AS a psychotherapist, Wendy Gannett thought she
was well equipped to adopt children from the foster care system. "I
worked with troubled kids and I saw the horrors," she said. "I knew
firsthand how trying it was."
But two years ago when she took in a 7-year-old boy named Alex, things
quickly got away from her. He had been sexually abused and deprived of
food, would turn defiant and even violent, and was so afraid of starving
that Ms. Gannett let him sleep with his lunchbox. After a few months his
younger sisters, Tanisha and Meraliz, joined them because Ms. Gannett
said Alex "wasn't going to be whole without them."
Caring for all three made Ms. Gannett feel completely overwhelmed, she
said. She quit her job to focus on the children and is living on food
stamps and payments from the foster care system. Her friends "freaked
out - they couldn't handle the intensity of the kids," she said. "I
started going to church suppers where I said, I have these three kids.
Who will help me?"
Then, last December, Ms. Gannett, 40, moved the family from their home
in nearby Northampton, Mass., to an unusual community here called
Treehouse. Opened in June of 2006, it was designed to bring together
families like hers with each other and with older adults who would act,
in the words of its founder, Judy Cockerton, as "honorary grandparents."
. . .
Treehouse is a planned intergenerational community, created in the hope
that a close-knit support network can prevent children from bouncing
from one foster home to another and give them tools to succeed. So far,
there are few such communities. But the concept, pioneered in 1994 by
Hope Meadows, at a former military base in Rantoul, Ill., is catching
on. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/garden/16treehouse.html?ei=5088&en=
77fdb0c78a021194&ex=1344916800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
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PAM BELLCK, NY TIMES - AS a psychotherapist, Wendy Gannett thought she
was well equipped to adopt children from the foster care system. "I
worked with troubled kids and I saw the horrors," she said. "I knew
firsthand how trying it was."
But two years ago when she took in a 7-year-old boy named Alex, things
quickly got away from her. He had been sexually abused and deprived of
food, would turn defiant and even violent, and was so afraid of starving
that Ms. Gannett let him sleep with his lunchbox. After a few months his
younger sisters, Tanisha and Meraliz, joined them because Ms. Gannett
said Alex "wasn't going to be whole without them."
Caring for all three made Ms. Gannett feel completely overwhelmed, she
said. She quit her job to focus on the children and is living on food
stamps and payments from the foster care system. Her friends "freaked
out - they couldn't handle the intensity of the kids," she said. "I
started going to church suppers where I said, I have these three kids.
Who will help me?"
Then, last December, Ms. Gannett, 40, moved the family from their home
in nearby Northampton, Mass., to an unusual community here called
Treehouse. Opened in June of 2006, it was designed to bring together
families like hers with each other and with older adults who would act,
in the words of its founder, Judy Cockerton, as "honorary grandparents."
. . .
Treehouse is a planned intergenerational community, created in the hope
that a close-knit support network can prevent children from bouncing
from one foster home to another and give them tools to succeed. So far,
there are few such communities. But the concept, pioneered in 1994 by
Hope Meadows, at a former military base in Rantoul, Ill., is catching
on. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/garden/16treehouse.html?ei=5088&en=
77fdb0c78a021194&ex=1344916800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
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