Children’s Home Close to Home Foster Care and Adoption/Homefinding departments have re-structured to become one team, under the umbrella of Close to Home – a Continuum of Caring. This new team design gives staff the opportunity to focus heavily on decreasing total number of youth placed in congregate care while increasing placements with foster and relative caregiver resources, paving the way to preserve the family unit. To date, Children’s Home has facilitated the successful adoptions of 180 children in Broome county.
Children’s Home staff from these two departments have been promoted to lead this new structure. Aliscia Gaucher will now be the Director, Close to Home. She will oversee a 28-member team. Gerald Michie and Ashley Fitzgerald will now be Assistant Director’s, Close to Home. Gerald supervises Homefinding and “Hard to Place” initiatives and Ashley focuses on staff development, skill building and the supervision of Foster Care cases. Between these three leaders, they have a combined experience of 52 years in the foster care field.
By creating one cohesive team we are able to collaborate more effectively with each other as well as our community partners and cross-train staff to better assist youth and families served. We are serving over 130 children in this program throughout Broome and surrounding counties. We have 135 local foster homes. Children’s Home continues to expand foster care services throughout the region including Sullivan and Cayuga counties.
Children’s Home, located in Greater Binghamton, NY, is a not-for-profit organization offering more than 20 programs serving over 600 children and their families: Community-based, Educational, Therapeutic and Residential Care. Our employees and foster families are dedicated to and trained in providing quality services to vulnerable children. 