When people hear the term “group home,” an idea that may come to mind includes ragged facilities full of unhappy children. Yet the Chambliss Shelter, which provides a home to children who are in state custody, and the Children’s Home, which provides early childhood education and childcare to children of all situations, blow all these assumptions out of the water.
Their 17 acres and 90,000 square feet of property houses a dedicated staff, non-stop stimulation and encouragement for children, and a safe place of learning and nurturing. Part of their services is the Children’s Home, a 24-hour day childcare center. They care for six-week-old babies, up to 12-year-old children every hour of the day, every single day of the year. Katie Harbison, director of development says, “We do that because there are a lot of parents, a lot of single parents especially – that need to work second or third shift, or work odd hours, or work two jobs, or whatever they need to do to support their families, and they need childcare during those hours. We are the only childcare center [in town] that does allow that 24-hour flexibility for children of all ages.”
The Children’s Home also charges parents according to their income on a sliding scale. Anyone can have their children in the program, and it offers affordable childcare for parents who are living at or below the poverty level. The program also provides all the diapers, formula, baby food and supplies for all the children, and they have a kitchen on premises that serves three meals and a snack every day.
Although it is very expensive to care for babies, the Children’s Home doesn’t change their fees according to age. These kinds of services make the Children’s Home in high demand, with a waiting list of more than 100 children. The Children’s Home features six different nurseries that hold four children each. They keep these ratios of children to adults based on how old the child is. Keeping the children to adult ratio in check is important to the Children’s Home because it factors into their three star rating, the highest attainable rating, which they have received from the Tennessee Department of Human Services licensing every year since the rating system’s inception.
Harbison says, “It’s really important to keep that three star rating because 80 percent of our children are coming from low-income homes, and that makes them at risk to fail in school, and so we want to make sure we are giving them the best early education so that they can succeed.” The staff at the Children’s Home and Chambliss Shelter also carries admirable records of service that lend themselves to this high rating. Their director of social service has 25 years here, and several teachers have been with the organization for 25 and 30 years.
“It’s very rare in this industry of childcare that you have this many long term teachers. It really says a lot about how well established we are,” Harbison says. There are two classrooms at the Children’s Home that are Hamilton County pre-school classrooms. Studies have shown that children who get a pre-school education start kindergarten dramatically ahead of children who don’t, Harbison says. They have also found that the deciding factor of whether a child goes to pre-school or not is income.
This led to the Pre-K initiative by Gov. Bredesen, which pumped money into the school system to establish free pre-K programs. The schools didn’t have the room to accommodate these new classrooms, so they have been located in childcare centers, community centers, or in at risk neighborhoods to encourage low-income families to utilize the programs, Haribson says. The second floor of the building is for school age children. Here, there is a computer lab, a library, five different classrooms that house between 75 and 100 children, and an art and dance room for the summer program. This summer program keeps more than 300 children busy with facilities on-site like a large swimming pool, a basketball court, a tennis court, a softball field, a soccer field and a disc golf course.
This is not to mention the 10 different playground areas that the property has, each providing different sized equipment for all the different ages of children. Additionally, there is a newer building that houses a gymnasium and more classrooms, including the Head Start classes. But it is a building that was actually built as the infirmary to the orphanage that was previously on this site that now houses the children of the Chambliss Shelter program.
The Chambliss Shelter began in 1872 to care for children orphaned by the yellow fever epidemic, making it one of the oldest social service agencies in town. Yet, it didn’t receive this name until 1946, when Judge Alexander W. Chambliss saw abused and neglected children coming through his court with no safe place to go. He personally gave $30,000 to build the Alexander W. Chambliss Home. In January 1983, the Chambliss Home was moved in its entirety to its current home and remodeled to stand alongside the Children’s Home location.
The Chambliss Shelter is a residential facility that holds the maximum eight beds, according to state law. The Shelter also stays at this max at all times, as it is the only group home available to the court system in Hamilton County. Another 22 children are cared for by the Shelter through foster families, which are recruited and trained by staff. Caring foster families are a huge need for the Shelter, Harbison says. “A lot of times, the foster families end up adopting the kids, and then we lose them as a foster family, so we are constantly having to restock our supply of good foster families,” she says.
While Chambliss, Bahner, & Stohpel are celebrating their 125th anniversary with a $25,000 gift to the organization, all locals can help the Children’s Home/Chambliss Shelter by shopping at their thrift store. This is also where children from the shelter can work to gain income, job experience and skills. Monetary donations, joining the shelter as a foster family, volunteering and even liking the Shelter’s Facebook page are all ways that the community can support his wonderful and giving place that has touched and continues to touch the lives of so many of our community’s children.