Episode 5: Partners in the Community - DABSJ

In this episode, Roger speaks with special guest Caitlin Hopkins about D.A. Blodgett St. John's, one of our partners in the community, about their history, recent donation drive, and their upcoming holiday event, Wrapped in Hope.

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In this episode of the Life and Finances Together podcast our senior financial professional, Roger David sits down with special guest, Caitlin Hopkins of D.A. Blodgett St. John's, one of our charitable partners in the community.

Roger has a personal connection with the organization from his childhood. He was in grade school at Kent Hills Elementary School, here in Grand Rapids, and kids came to the school from St. John's Home. And it was something at seven or eight years old, when you’re a young child, and somebody comes in that's a new kid in school, at the beginning of the year and all of a sudden you realize that they don't have a mom and dad. And you're thinking “how can that be?”  It was something that he hadn’t been confronted with in his whole life, but it was unforgettable. 

So when the opportunity came to connect with the organization that once was St. John’s Home and is now D.A. Blodgett St. John’s, Roger made that partnership happen. In doing so we met Caitlin, who we’re excited to learn from and also to express our support for. It's the mission, it's taking care of children who can't necessarily overcome the deal that they've been dealt that we at Rinvelt & David think is just so important. 

Caitlin begins by telling us a bit more about the history of D.A. Blodgett St. John's and how they serve the community and the children in need in West Michigan. 

Hearing Roger’s story and stories like his bring her so much pride because it shows the history of these two organizations. She goes on to explain that Roger’s story highlights a particular unique challenge that they have in trying to explain who they are. D.A. Blodgett St. John's which we use the name DABSJ, has kept its “mouthful” of a name because the emotional response Roger has to the St. John's Home is matched with an emotional response that people have to D.A. Blodgett for Children. 

These two organizations both surprisingly and not surprisingly were founded in 1887 out of a need for caring for children during a pandemic, which we all are very familiar with right now. They both had a long history of caring for children, specifically in West Michigan. Very local. And then as they continued to learn about how to do that best, from the start they both were asylums or orphanages, big, gigantic buildings filled with children being taken care of by community members. On the St. John's side that was the Dominican Sisters. At the D.A. Blodgett for Children side that was just community members caring for these children. So, throughout the 1900s we see that process as they learn, as studies have come out about what's best for the children, they've evolved and as they evolved they came closer together in many ways. And to make a long story short, in 2010, after many years of partnership, these two organizations actually merged. So that is how you get that name D.A. Blodgett St. John's. 

St. John's Home, what it accomplished in its residential treatment was a huge part of our history. D.A. Blodgett what it accomplished with caring for those in West Michigan, and even hosting statewide programs, and doing things like Big Brothers Big Sisters was a huge story. So both of them coming together is kind of monumental and it honestly speaks to what the organization has a unique ability to do as DABSJ. 

They provide something called the continuum of care and they’re hyper focused on the local community and with some programs that do statewide initiatives. The continuum of care includes foster and adoption care, but also a program called family preservation, which focuses on behavioral health, child psychiatry, and those sorts of programs that Roger mentioned in schools. And then on top of all of that they also have residential treatment.

The residential treatment is for children in the foster care program, for the most part, but they live right on the DABSJ campus. So that is the continuum. It's about meeting children and families where they need the most support. 

And that might be with a family that is still the birth family, a child who's in their birth family scenario and you're helping them with behavioral health. But it also could mean a situation where for foster care they are being removed from their birth family for a period of time so that healthy strategies can be re-established to try to reunify them. And in some cases, it means adoption because if the parental rights were terminated that means adoption is the next step. 

But when you look at the numbers, the vast majority of what DABSJ is doing is in the community trying to prevent adoption. When you look at the most traumatic experiences for children, it's being removed from things that they know and people that they know and communities they're accustomed to and being entered into a whole different experience or in some cases feeling institutionalized! This is why the highest number of children served at DABSJ are in services where they are with their families. 

Roger comments that what DABSJ is doing now is so much more than what he remembered with St. John's Home. He recalled that he knew the word orphanage and that it was on Leonard Street, where the kids lived who didn’t have moms or dads, and that was all he really knew up until very recently. The Rinvelt & David team got to meet with Caitlin at their location and learn about their new building and facilities, and the capabilities that the space offers. It was so much more than what he thought he’d be walking into just a few short weeks ago! 

Caitlin describes the new campus, and specifically the new building, in many ways as 100 years worth of dreaming. The two organizations have been in the community for over 100 years and have consistently asked “how do we support families,” whether they're still together or whether it's a foster family, or an adoptive family, or any of that. And they would sort of dream up things like it would be really great for the kids living on campus to blow off steam in a gym. It would be really great that if you're coming for a family visitation and you are seeing your child who has not been living with you temporarily, if you can do something other than sitting in a conference room staring at each other… if you could do art, if you could be on a playground, if you could, again, be in a gym. 

Caitlin highlights the gym because that was the biggest investment in the new building and they really love it. It's a magical space. This new building, from her perspective, makes everything possible. It opens a door into a future that makes so much programming possible for us that just simply wouldn't be otherwise. They’ve consolidated. Because of the expansiveness of their programs and the two different organizations coming together there were a number of different office buildings around the city. With this new campus, they all were consolidated so everyone is now in one spot. That means all of the administrative support as well as the program team is together. Though, in truth, a lot of the family support service staff is in schools rather than at the building, but there are touchdown spaces for them. 

There are conference rooms where people can gather and have trainings including the foster care trainings for families that are interested in foster care. The gym and the proximity to the residential Knapp campus makes a lot of continuity possible that was never possible before, and the culture has become unified in a way that was never possible before either. So, you’ll find a lot more cross-departmental collaboration happening. And a bonus of this large new space is that just a few weeks ago they were able to host a state funded and state-wide back-to-school bash for any families that have adopted or are in a foster family situation. That's decades worth of dreaming that has finally come true. 

Roger shares that when he toured the main building, one of the things that he could feel with the space was that it’s a place that looks like “you meant it.” It wasn’t a place that you settled for, or that was just good enough. That's not this facility. It's very impressive. It’s well thought out and intentional and when you look at that, it's just so amazing to say, “you know what, this is something that someone would feel like "this this was meant for me."” 

Caitlin is pleased to inform Roger that they came out of the construction entirely debt free! The project did not draw from their general funding, which is incredible. The community rallied around this capital campaign in a very significant way which speaks to the dedication our community has for these children. Those sorts of investments can capsize non-profits, so it's a testament to the long-term donors and corporate partners, and so many individuals that showed up and said "no, you have the track record of caring for these children in a way that we believe is vital to the success of our communities and we want to invest in our future as a community by investing in these kids and this building." 

Speaking of one of the uses for the DABSJ new spaces, we discuss the a big drive that they host every year, the Backpack Drive. Rinvelt & David participated this year preparing 20 backpacks with everything from pens and highlighters to calculators and water bottles and everything in between. And then the team went to the beautiful DABSJ campus to drop off our small contribution to this big program, and we got to see how the community room space worked perfectly for volunteers making this drive the success that it is every year. 

Caitlin kindly points out that she wouldn't call our contribution a little piece of it. 20 bags, and in particular the 20 bags that we stuffed were for kids that are older, for 16+ year olds. And those are always the hardest because they have the most stuff that they need, and they need the most expensive bag because it's got to be the biggest to hold the weight. She thanks us for providing the largest single donation of bags for any individual company, which is a huge deal for the drive. They put together 422 bags this year! That's up from last year, which was just shy of 300. She explains that there were a few reasons for the drastic change in quantity, but mostly they amount to the building. They officially opened in May of last year, but the ribbon cutting was on August 10th and the backpacks that were being delivered to case workers were scheduled to go out on August 13th. So last year was limited in its capacity because of the timing and because of the need to get used to a brand new building, to settling in. But since the opening, everything has expanded. Seeing 422 bags just brings so much joy and actually, around 30 of those were added right at the end of the drive because there were enough supplies and volunteers to make it possible.

Broadly speaking the backpack drive is an important support for the staff and families they serve. The DABSJ staff is composed of people who handle clients in a variety of our programs. So they are the ones working with families directly and they're able to identify if there are financial barriers to these children starting off the school year with everything that they need. And that might be a foster family who might get stipends for the children that are in the home, but the staff is able to recognize the need and provide these supplies, relieving this financial burden and allowing their stipend to go towards other supplies and other needs for the kids. But also for families in the family support services who are very often experiencing a lot of financial burdens, our staff is able to meet with them and say, “this is a piece that we can support you with.” The staff identify cases that would find this incredibly beneficial, they submit them to us in a form that asks for favorite color, favorite cartoon character, and anything else that might help us find the perfect fit for this child, and then we get to work with community donors and volunteers gathering supplies and then assembling the backpacks. You can donate cash, you can donate supplies, or you can sponsor children specifically. For a few weeks we post lists of information where you can see the kids’ first names and what their needs and wishes are and you can go and shop for them. A lot of families do this with their kids, go to the store, and it's a way to kind of model philanthropy, but also help children experience something like what Roger experienced, of recognizing that your peers who maybe aren't doing as well as you in math are going home to a very different situation and that's distracting. 

Studies show that trauma pauses your brain. Sometimes you cannot perform as well in school if you've experienced trauma just simply because you are in fight or flight, so when we look at school it makes people feel like they have to measure up, but you're not being provided with all the same experiences and able to measure up equally. So the school supplies really truly help. 

Roger is deeply moved by the opportunity to shop for someone specific. That's got to be an incredible thing in and of itself, just to say, you know what, here's somebody that cares. This is not just a check that shows up or even some things that show up, you know, with some donations and everything. Now you're saying, "hey there's somebody here that cares about you." You're special to them. 

Caitlin agrees and says that the word that is used a lot around her office, but in particular this year for the backpack drive, is you're starting this child out not just with a nice backpack, or that it's going to last them their year, but you're starting them out with hope. Hope that their situation can be improved and hope that that whatever it is that they've internalized about their value is... wait, that might be wrong. I might be... I have value and I do deserve to succeed, and I can succeed and people care. One piece of that, donors are asked to include a note, like "hey, we're rooting for ya." There's a really cute poem that the Rinvelt & David backpacks had, which was great. And for the others DABSJ had park parties - out in Garfield Park weekly with little notes that community members could write. The most precious were the kids writing to other kids-writing to their peers. One of them was like "You're gonna do great. Eat a lot at lunch, and here's a picture of Darth Vader." So absolutely, the message being that “you matter” and that “you're more than your circumstances.” She also just how important these items are to the children. And it's not just the pencils, but it's the bag, and it's the lunchbox. It's the water bottle. And it's not saying that we want to ensure that these children are “keeping up.” They don't all have to have a Puma bag, but if you if you were to just go out and get generic bags for these kids and just say, "oh you're in kindergarten you must love Bluey,” but they don't like Bluey, that can be humiliating for a child. And what our staff and volunteers say so often is what sets DABSJ apart, it's not what they do it's how they do it. It’s the care and attention to detail and understanding of what’s important. It’s evident in their programming and in the people involved. 

Roger confirms that the drive is just so meaningful to say, “hey, you know what, we put some effort into this” because you can see it. Caitlin adds that these aren't hidden children, they are in every school district. They have children going to Rockford and Kenowa Hills. There are kids going to every one of the school districts. And that's somewhat part of the problem is people think "oh, it's not in my school" but in all likelihood it is. These children are being supported all across our county and our entire region, so we want to be able to make sure they're taken care of well. 

Now that the Backpack Drive is finished, the next big volunteer opportunity, one the Rinvelt and David team and our client volunteers are excited to be a part of, is the Wrapped In Hope program. It’s a drive that gives companies and individuals the chance to wrap holiday gifts for the children and families supported by D.A. Blodgett St. John’s. Now’s a great time to share more about it! 

The holiday gift drive itself has been around forever on both sides of the organization. What is new is, again just to keep pointing towards it, is the building. For many years community donors would sponsor families and children and then bring wrapped gift donations. The team would take those wrapped gifts and organize them and then the staff would take them to the homes. That was because we had very small buildings to work from and the influx of gifts would present a space issue, so a quick turnout was needed.

By having a gym, which, for Caitlin the smell of the gym smells like Christmas because the Holiday Drive was her first seminal memory in the new gym. The DABSJ team said, “we have the space and we have potentially the amount of volunteers to be able to again improve how we're doing this.” 

The Wrapped In Hope week is the response to our experimentation last year, because Caitlin had so many long-standing staff and volunteers who thought "there's no way. We can't wrap all these things. There's no way. You won't be wrapping next year.” And she said, “I think our community can handle it. I think we can do this.” So they created a workshop of support where there were 10 wrapping stations with a whole center aisle full of supplies. It was magical. They had a station off to the side for sorting and preparing. When the gifts came in, the staff would audited them. They would be processed, tagged, and then put in a bag. Volunteers would come grab the bag, bring it over to the wrapping station, wrap the gifts so that they looked similar. Because those details matter. Having your one sibling have drastically different wrapping paper and drastically different supplies and things like that than you is kind of jarring, it just speaks to the otherness of your experience, and so those details matter in terms of mental health.

So this year, the Wrapped In Hope week is from the second to the sixth of December and each day they will be pairing the drive with a corporate donor/sponsor who either just wants to contribute financially or who brings a team of volunteers to help wrap or both. Each of those days they'll be wrapping gifts in the gym with the volunteers and staff. Gifts can be dropped off throughout the week and it's basically just a time to encourage the community to come around the organization and help get these gifts ready for the families.  It culminates on Saturday, December 7th, the main community wrapping event, and that's the final day to drop off donation, which is an adjustment from last year. There will be volunteers with Santa hats on and warm coats ready to exchange the gifts that are being dropped off with hot cocoa or whatever the case may be. Caitlin is hoping to get a food truck with some hot soup and grilled cheese going there, too. On that community wrap day, it will be just a jolly... a jolly old time of just really reveling in this community experience. And that's something that we all are yearning for - how do we village together. How do we come together and help raise our community's children up and make sure they're successful. 

There will be a similar process for gift sponsorship to the Backpack Drive where you can sponsor a family or a child. You can pick them out, see everything that they specifically requested, and then come around them with support, or you can just donate funds, where the DABSJ staff then sources items for them. Or you can volunteer. Or do all of it, which would be wonderful! 

It's such a big program because when you think about all of the different ways that this organization serves children and families, each one of those programs has a unique relationship with this drive. If you're in foster care you might be facing the first Christmas where your family has a new addition that they've never had before and you're trying to establish new traditions and you're helping them navigate the trauma of not being in their home. This is their child's first experience not being with their family, so your capacity to go and specialize gifts for these children is limited because you are really just navigating a very emotional time for these kids in your family. In some cases you are financially now taking on a whole new burden, and so if you're an adoptive family you might have the first year a lot of friends and family come around this whole new exciting change in your life but year two, year three, year four, it's not quite the same. And so you might be trying to navigate that. And the DABSJ team does support families for as much as they can for as long as they can. 

Then on another program side, last year Caitlin remembers having a specific item request and the donor funds that were collected allowed the staff to find some very specific needs for certain families. And in family support services, they are oftentimes helping families with children with developmental disabilities and so in one special case, all that the child really wanted was a mini trampoline, because they can perform better emotionally when they are bouncing. So often kids in the autism spectrum have specific needs and we don’t always realize how important something like bouncing on a little trampoline, or bouncing on an exercise ball, or whatever their needs are, is to them and those items might just have a ticket price that's out of reach. So they'll say "we want nothing else besides this little mini trampoline." Something with bars that they can hold on to and jump. The family might be able to find something affordable, but not that one big gift and that big ticket item means all the difference in the world. 

Roger comments, “if you can make a difference... people are like "well how can I make a difference?" You're making a difference on a very large scale. I mean all of us make a difference on even a small scale. That gift, that gift was something that they wanted. Something that was just near and dear to them. We might not think twice about it. But they're gonna probably remember that for the rest of their life. I mean what an impact that you can make. It's just incredible.” 

He goes back to the Backpack Drive and continues, “four hundred some backpacks, you know, you'd have to think, and this would be enough for me, and I hope it'd be enough for anybody else, to say, "look, if there's, I don't know, 40 kids, if it's 10 of that number, right, that is going to carry that with them for the rest of their life. Do you know how impactful that is?” 

Caitlin agrees and also points out that when you're talking about impact you can't just focus on the kids., Think about it. If I if I have a sibling: the sibling, the aunts, the uncles, the grandmas, the parents.... There are so many people that are impacted. And if you can make a situation better, if you can find progress, you can find hope for a situation, there are so many people impacted. If someone in your family had a traumatic moment recently it impacts you. 

As DABSJ continues to grow the Holiday Drive, there are just so many ways that the program could go even further. In foster care they're still working for reunification and so how does it look and how does it feel if the foster family is given all of these gifts and then the family that you're trying to reunify with, your birth family, doesn't have a financial ability to also give. Oftentimes the situations that we're encountering are financial. First and foremost, and so if we can find a way to deal with other barriers that might be impacting their ability to care for their children and get them to the place where they can, one of the ways that they can continue to bond with their child, even if they're not living with them, is "here's a gift." So when you donate gifts throughout the year or in general during the holiday drive, some go into a pop-up shop that can be drawn from when the staff need to supplement lists. And birth families can “shop” when they're going on a family visit. They can pick something out and say, “I saw this I thought of you.” Then during their family visit they can open it with their child. 61 clients used this program last year, but it was a small shop. So this year it will be expanding to make that a possibility for more clients.

In some cases foster families will want to come pick up the gifts after they've been assembled at the drive and they go home and wrap them so that they match all the other kids gifts. It’s just another way of making so many feel like part of the family. 

Caitlin shares one of her favorite stories about a generous gift. She was on the floor auditing donations, drenched in sweat, back hurting because there's a lot of bending down, sitting there when a caseworker comes and asks, “do you know who the donors are?” And Caitlin said, “I mean some cases I do. Is there an issue?” And the caseworker says, “this donor…they got her a violin.” And Caitlin was surprised, but relieved that it wasn’t something bad. The caseworker went on to share that she had met with the child the previous week and she had to quit orchestra because she didn't have a violin. And now the child is just going to lose it, because she has a violin.  Caitlin had recently started and was feeling the emotions of the situation. “I was like, oh my gosh, she was going to quit orchestra? She was going to quit orchestra.” She was watching the caseworker cry and was thinking, “the wins... the wins.” This is a win for the child, but it's a win for the caseworker who's entering into these situations that are so hard and they're being seen in so many different lights by the child, by the birth family, by the foster family, by the system... 

Our staff sometimes sees themselves as the person holding the umbrella over the child. And each spoke of that umbrella is a person that's connected to this case, to the situation. And they're just there with the child. 

And they know, just like the child does, they know each of these distinct relationships. They know their school counselor, they know their birth family, they know their siblings, they know the foster families that sometimes the multiple foster families that their siblings are in, because it's hard to find families that will take multiple children at once. They know their therapist and all these different service providers, but they're there right next to the kid holding the umbrella, protecting them from the storm as much as they can. 

And so when you think about something like a donor coming in with a violin, it makes that so much easier. It's those small things that are saying that not only is the child not alone, not only is the birth family not alone, not only is the counselor, everybody, we're all in it and we're also interconnected. And that is such a beautiful part of this. 

She shares one more thing about the holiday gift drive. It is one of the most sustainable programs that DABSJ has, in Caitlin’s opinion, because there's no such thing as too much. When people see leftover school supplies, they wonder what is going to be done with them. But there is no such thing as leftovers at D.A. Blodgett St. John’s. Those get turned into supplies for so many things. The crayons, some are stored for the start of the next year for efficiency, but the rest of them go into the art therapy room. For the holiday gift drive and other year-round donations, there is the Care Closet that is supported by our community volunteers. They maintain this supply room where if you're working on good behavior with a child or if their birthday comes up and you want to be able to celebrate your birthday with them, there are toys and coloring books and fidget toys, whatever it is that we have left from the holiday gift drive turns into supplies that last the entire year. It is such a vital program that extends beyond the holiday gift drive that the staff can continually give gifts and support to these kids. It's incredible.  

Roger says, “I always like to talk about the ripple effect, right? There's just one little thing. I mean, we talk about these different things, you know, with our clients all the time. This is what we do for a living. How much are you going to spend on Christmas? How much are you going to spend on birthdays? Those types of things. And you just kind of take it for granted. You kind of gloss over this thing when all of a sudden, this is a little bit more meaningful.

This is something now that affects somebody's life. The ripple effect, not only the child, but the parents and the grandparents. And you know what? I'll tell you another thing to the general community too. Being able to change the conditioning that the child has been used to. Being able to change their view of certain things or even of people. And you know, how they think people feel or view them. I mean, it's just, we're so thankful for what the DABSJ team is doing and anything that we can do to help. We're here to help.” 

Caitlin offers the opportunity to any who might have an interest in fostering or adoption, DABSJ has a monthly meeting at their building where they just talk about it. You won’t be signed up or leave with a child. But it's something to think about as you enter a new stage of life, maybe even retirement. 

There are so many myths about foster parents. You can't be too old really, you can be retired... they're incredibly inclusive. So whatever you believe is holding you back from being a foster parent, it doesn't exist. Talk to the DABSJ team. It could be something you're planning for five years down the line. They would love to have families that are able to come in and take care of these kids and hopefully reunify them. 

Thanks so much for watching, for listening, and for learning more about D.A. Blodgett St. John's with us today. If you have any questions about our team, our services, or finances in general, please check out our website. That's RinveltDavid.com. Give us a call, send us an email. And of course, please like and subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for the next episode.