Presbyterian charity cuts costs, but keeps helping kids
Anita Jany’s mother died when she was five, and when her father abandoned her and her siblings when she was 15, she teetered on the brink of disaster. But 30 years later, Jany is a successful Columbia caterer known for baking some of the best-tasting rolls in town.
What turned her life around? She says it was the structure provided by Presbyterian Children’s Services in 1979, which took her into its Farmington home after she had lived with three foster families. She now serves on the board of the Stubbins Memorial Regional Family and Youth Center in Moberly, a similar PCS facility that serves children from central Missouri, including Columbia and Boone County.
Living in the home meant not having to worry about where her next meal was coming from. “It was the first stability I had in my entire life,” she said. “I had regular meals and regular health care. My teeth were incredibly crooked, and they got me braces. We had counseling weekly.”
While homeless and hungry, she was failing in school. The staff made her study for at least an hour every evening no matter what, and in three months, she went from earning D’s and F’s to A’s and B’s, she said.
In addition, the weekly counseling helped her learn from her experiences and grow. When she turned 16, she got a job at a local Sonic diner and saved all her money, which allowed her to get her own apartment when she left the home at age 18.
Affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA and the Children’s Foundation of Mid-America, Presbyterian Children’s Services serves 105 children in foster care throughout central Missouri and serves about two dozen a year at the Stubbins Home, said Anita Kiessling-Caver, regional vice president for central Missouri. The organization cares for abused and neglected children across the state via residential homes such as the Stubbins Memorial Regional Family and Youth Center in Moberly and other programs, such as counseling for children and families in Columbia and Boone County. Last year, the organization served 14 children from Boone County, 237 from Randolph County and two from Cole County, said Jim Ford, executive vice president for community relations.
It has been the best and worst of times for the organization lately. Two months ago, it expanded its services to the Columbia area when it began work on a contract for the Missouri Alliance for Children and Families, partnering with Boys and Girls Town of Missouri and the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home as a service provider. But just last month, the recession delivered a blow to the organization, causing it to let four employees go in November: two in development, one in training and one in direct childcare services. Kiessling-Caver said she did not believe the employment cuts would affect either the delivery of childcare services or fundraising. “I think the slack will be picked up by our corporate office,” she said. “We’re not the only social service agency that has had to try to figure out how to cut back and save money in order to continue to deliver services. The last thing you want to cut is service delivery, so personnel had to go.”
The organization will meet again in December to look at the budget, trying to find ways to cut expenses. “We are looking at all possibilities,” said Ford, who works at Presbyterian Children’s Services headquarters in St. Louis. “It’s very possible that services may change in the next year. It is even very possible that we may need to close a children’s home.”
Traditional residential treatment based on the old “orphanage” model is very expensive, he said. The organization began in 1914 in Farmington, when a group of Presbyterian ministers purchased an old school and opened it as an orphanage to serve the families of mine-workers whose death rates were very high. In 1950, the organization purchased a farm outside of town for the boys, and the girls followed in 1989. The Stubbins home opened in the 1980s.
Six years ago, the organization began to focus more of its efforts on in-home community services and family intervention. That way, it can serve about 1,400 Missouri children in their own family homes rather than 250 in residential homes, Ford said. Ford says the good news is that people in central Missouri have proven to be very good donors. The Presbyterian Church is divided into Synods, larger organizational units, and Presbyteries, which cover smaller areas. Per capita giving in Missouri Union Presbytery, the unit of the Presbyterian Church that covers mid-Missouri, is much higher than that of any other presbytery in the Synod, he said. “It’s half-again as much, far above any other,” he said. “You folks are just golden, very caring and very generous. I don’t know what the difference is; maybe it’s something in the water or the air.”
As for alumnus Jany, after a few months on her own, she left Missouri to live with family in the San Diego area. But she wound up marrying a soldier from Columbia and returned to start Anita’s Homestyle Catering in 1996. By 2004, drained by 14-hour workdays, she sold the business and got a sales job with a food service company. In June 2007, after a divorce and remarriage, she decided to try catering again and started Columbia Catering Co., located in Hong Kong Square along Interstate 70 Drive Southeast. This year, her business grossed $125,000.
“Everyone still calls my company Anita’s even though it is now Columbia Catering Co., and everyone knows me from my award-winning dinner rolls,” she said. This time of year is her busiest time; she sold 225 dozen dinner and cinnamon rolls the day before Thanksgiving.
She joined the Stubbins Home advisory board to give back to the organization that got her started on the road to success. In that position, she serves as a strong advocate for the children’s personal needs, such as getting them decent clothing. As a mother of teenagers, and having lived it herself, she knows the importance of wearing nice school clothing for a child’s self-esteem.
“When I came into the home, I didn’t have clothes that fit me,” she said. “They sent me to the basement of the administration building, where it smelled like mold and mildew, to pick out clothes that people had donated. It looked like the kind of stuff most people dump off after they couldn’t sell it at their yard sale.”
One time, she came down hard on staff for sending a new resident to school in slippers. “I cried about that because these children have already been abused, neglected and molested,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to worry about being teased for not having shoes.”
Jany worries about her brother and sister, who didn’t take the same road and led rather unhappy lives, she said. They didn’t want to live in an orphanage. Her brother moved in with relatives who didn’t really want him, and her sister, who moved in with a friend’s family, ended up pregnant at age 17 and is now recovering from drug addiction.
“I ended up having a better living situation,” Jany said. “At the time, I was really angry about it. You’re really confined there; they keep close tabs on you. But, boy, just a year after I left there, I realized how lucky I was.”
It was just the boost she needed to put her on the road to recovery. “It was a great place for me,” she said. “They just really did me wonderful. I don’t know how I would have turned out.”