OUR MISSION:
Try-Again Homes, Incorporated is a private, non-profit corporation committed to providing safe nurturing places for children in need and dedicated to the growth, development, and empowerment of individuals and families for healthier communities.

• Download the Foster / Adoptive Parent Application (Pennsylvania)
• Download the Foster / Adoptive Parent Application (West Virginia)
• Download the Release of Information (Fairmont, WV)
• Download the Release of Information (Parkersburg, WV)
• Download FAQ's about Foster parenting
• Download Foster Parenting Forms and Medical Worksheets
• Employment Opportunities

Each month, Try-Again Homes, Incorporated will feature a different training Try-Again Homes and continuing education article.  Please read the latest Foster Parent Training and Continuing Education Article.

12TH ANNUAL SPORTING CLAYS SHOOT

Try-Again Homes 12th Annual Sporting Clays Shoot will be held on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at Hunting Hills in Dilliner, PA.  This is our one yearly fundraising event.  Last year we had over 70 participants and raised a gross of $10,000!!  We hope this year will fare even better.  Please click here to get additional details and to download the brochure.

OUR HISTORY:
Try-Again Homes was incorporated as a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation in 1976 by a group of ministers and lay people who felt a strong need to help abused, neglected and troubled children and families. Today, we serve more than 800 families throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia annually. Our cost-effective, progressive programs are alternatives to institutional care and are geared to enhance and strengthen the lives of our families.

Board President's Message:

Brian J. Smith
Fiscal 2006 marked another year of expanded services and improved organizational infrastructure at Try-Again Homes. Organic growth in existing programs coupled with new family visitation services, a new foster care office in Allegheny County, PA, and a new Independent Living facility in Greene County, PA resulted in an approximate 10% increase in total revenues. Considerable time and effort was invested in our West Virginia offices as we continued to raise awareness as to the urgent need for foster parents. At the present time, we are considering expansion of our foster care services into the Wheeling, West Virginia area.

Within the organization, quality assurance, program effectiveness, operating efficiency, and transparency continue to receive a lot of attention. However, our highest priority remains those children and youth who are in need of our services, as we continually strive to create a better living environment for the most vulnerable members of our society. We are once again preparing to begin our strategic planning process and look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the coming year.

Executive Director's Message:

L. Scott Hilliard, Former Executive Director
The collaborative premise says: If you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions, and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organization and community. This is evident in both board governance and staff commitment at Try-Again Homes. Over the last year we have gone beyond the standard practice of business and explored how Try-Again can innovate new ideas to some of society’s problems. We have partnered with a company and acquired solar power at our administrative office.

We have developed partnerships with numerous non-profits and corporations to enhance staff’s awareness of the world around them, through an international trip to an orphanage in Peru. We have created programming to give the families and children we service an opportunity to help themselves. We have created working committee’s to elicit feedback on how we do and continually question and explore the need to be as transparent as possible in both our fiscal matters and programs.

We are continuously adapting and refining our vision and aspirations in order to enhance the impact on consumers and on the community at large. We understand the difference between mission drift and mission growth. It is all this that continues to inspire me as we forge on through some turbulent funding cycles and the increasing needs of social, environmental and human suffering that we have a responsibility for.

Over the past thirty plus years, Try-Again Homes has succeeded in accomplishing its mission, along with the successful growth, thus making a greater impact on families and children. We believe that to be effective we will need to tailor our revenue strategies to mission, ambition, and internal resource generating capacity.

I hope while you review our annual report you see some of the inspirational trends and our continued strength in the management of people and our fiscal position.

Clinical Director's Report:

Allison Leon, Clinical Director
As one year ends and another begins, it is helpful to take stock of our progress over the past year as well as to consider the strides we still hope to make as the new year unfolds. The clinical staff and programs of Try-Again Homes have been through many changes over the past 4 years, with the overarching goal of providing excellent services to all of the client populations we serve. A more recent, but no less important goal has been to demonstrate substantive outcomes that help the various clients meet their treatment goals and the programs that serve them meet and surpass the industry standards that guide our planning.

The past few years have presented a challenge as programs, particularly in Pennsylvania, have continued to spread across a broad-spectrum service continuum. We currently provide services that range from one-session group interventions, to the traditional in-home and community-based services, to an after-school program, up through and including two residential programs, with an international child welfare program just on the horizon. West Virginia continues to focus primarily on Foster Care Services, but within foster care there is included a broad base of medically necessary services to maintain the stability of placements and children’s treatment needs. These may range from basic case management services to supportive and intensive counseling services, to psychological testing, and are inclusive of diverse client populations, including developmentally disabled, and medically fragile clients and the homes that foster them.

The counseling program for victims of crime continues to work with existing services in the communities served to envelope those client populations who have no other service options available to them; hoping to stem the tide of future child welfare issues for those families served. While this diversity of programs proves challenging for the clinical staff that provide the service, the inclusion of quality-oriented practice models permeates the service provision and the planning of the individual staff providers and their supervisors.

We have made great strides in the inclusion of all programs into the Continuous Quality Improvement process and have recently begun to pursue the inclusion of all departments in the process to further the quest for excellence in service. We have seen remarkable results in permanency outcomes for both foster care and adoption service clients consistently over the past three years as well as marked improvement in safety and stability for those children in out-of-home care. We continue to seek a more efficient method of tracking outcomes across programs while still making progress in the use of existing methods and incorporating those results into both program planning and strategic planning for the agency at large. In short, our aim is for quality to be “service ” here at Try-Again regardless of the program or service being given. After all in the words of Koffi Anan: ”There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children.”

Child Welfare Through Community Building
We know that no one child and family serving system has the mandate, resources, or reach to address the personal issues or social and community conditions that are related to risk factors faced by families involved with child welfare systems. Hundreds of thousands of children and families are helped every day by the child welfare system and other child and family serving systems. Millions more, however, do not have access to available, appropriate, or equitable services and support. For far too many children and families, the failure to meet these human needs and basic rights has significant consequences. This includes lives filled with pain, suffering, and quiet desperation. Even so, Try-Again Homes has learned and on occasion succeeded. Community building is becoming an essential part of all aspects of Try-Again's development. When we work in or influence these systems, fundamentally change our roles with one another, change our relationships with the children, youth, and families we serve, and actively engage community stakeholders, we provide more strategic supports and can collaboratively achieve more effective outcomes for this most vulnerable population. This is the work before us. Community building helps return social work to its core mission of addressing families social, economic, and emotional needs. What is different from the past and reflective of visions of the future, is that in community building, the social worker's role is to build capacity in families and communities as they define their own goals, solutions, and assets. When community's residents do this, they learn they are capable of change and capable of caring for other families and neighbors. As you review our fiscal and operational performance over the 2006 & 2007 fiscal year, you will undoubtedly notice some thematic continuums within all our programs, and their ability to offer services to each and every child. It is our belief that with the continued support of individuals, corporations, and the foundations, this trend will continue and even flourish.