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Bridge Receiving Center

November 12th, 2019 Posted by admin Giving

The most important outcome from this grant is that the Zarmada Giving Funds have allowed Bridge Receiving Center the assurance that as soon as we are licensed and feel our staff and program are ready to go, we will be able to open our doors to the first children who need us, having the necessary funds already in-hand to bridge the gap between our opening and the State’s reimbursement. Having this freedom and assurance has allowed our team to focus on everything else that goes into making our facility, staff, and program the best they can be and taken the pressure off that start date. We are not yet through the entire licensing process but feel confident that we will be complete for an October 2019 start date. Your generosity helped turn this vision into a reality, providing a safe and trauma- informed program that will take children from their first moments in the foster care system and start the healing process right away.

Program Operations are scheduled to launch by October 2019, pending licensing completion. The Center is estimated to serve between 72 – 144 children (ages 6 – 10 years old, along with siblings 4 – 14 years old) in our first 12 months of operations. These will be children from King, Snohomish, and Skagit County who are entering foster care for the very first time, having just been removed from their homes by CPS. Our original target population for Phase 1 was boys ages 6 – 10 years old, based on recommendations from DSHS as the population in our region most in need of care. Over the course of the past year, that target population has been expanded to include girls in that age group as well as any sibling sets of the children in our care who are between 4 – 14 years old. This change has come at the request of DCYF (the new oversight organization in WA State). Bridge has agreed to this change because of our desire to keep siblings together whenever possible. Expanding our program to serve both genders and a wider age range through our initial program has required us to make some adjustments as to how our program will be carried out, but we feel the challenges to our organization in making these changes are far outweighed by the benefit to the children and families we are serving through our program.

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