During the past 110 years, Cunningham Children's Home has evolved from its early days as an orphanage to one of the most highly respected, professional residential treatment centers in the state of Illinois. Annually, Cunningham Children's Home cares for over 250 boys and girls, age 6 to 21 in a variety of programs, including residential care, community-based group homes, independent living, treatment foster care, a residential special education school and a day treatment school. Cunningham continues to adapt and change to meet the present day needs of troubled children and youth as it looks to the needs of future generations.
About
The mission of Cunningham Children's Home is to offer emotional, social, educational and spiritual support to children, youth and families by providing a safe, nurturing, therapeutic environment in which individuals may experience personal growth and healing.The youth served at Cunningham are dealing with a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems, special education needs and learning challenges. Some of the youth have been diagnosed with severe psychological disorders because they have experienced severe abuse and neglect. Behavioral and emotional problems such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are usually present as well. Some of the children have special education needs due to developmental disorders caused by birth trauma or illnesses such as Autistic Disorder or Tourettes Syndrome.
Check the Cunningham Children's Home website for more information.
Possible Projects
Oral history
Cunningham will be celebrating its 110th anniversary this summer with a reunion event for former residents. For this event, in conjunction with the creation of its history room in its "currently being built" new "spiritual life" center, Cunningham would like LINC teams to:
Continue the Design (a Spring 2005 team project) of an area in the new history room to
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listen to oral histories on tape or CD
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read the texts of oral histories
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look through photograph albums
Continue the Design (a Spring 2005 project) of an electronic system (such as an information kiosk) for visitors to Cunningham and to keep historical materials easily accessible in the history room
Continue the Design (a Spring 2005 project) of an organizational system to keep historical materials easily accessible in the history room
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oral history binders & oral history resource information
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oral history tapes, CD’s, texts
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large photograph collection
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newspaper clippings, newsletters
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alumni letters, etc.
Continue the Fall 2004 team's project of doing oral histories covering all eras of Cunningham history.
Work with current oral histories to
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clean up the sound on the tapes (diminish background noise, bring out interviewer & interviewee voices)
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put these histories on CD’s
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design a way to turn the oral histories into "talking books"
Research recording equipment that will
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--give the best recorded sound for taped interviews
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--give us the functions we need to record easily & simply
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--affordable
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--easy to carry around and use
Financial Planning and Resource Development
Eighty-five percent of Cunningham's annual revenue comes from fees for services from referring agencies. As those resources face extreme budget constraints, what can Cunningham do to enhance revenues from other sources to continue providing high quality services to children and youth?- Cunningham Children's Home currently receives fees for services from referring agencies such as the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Illinois Department of Human Services, local school districts, and other referring sources. What would be the impact on Cunningham Children's Home if it were to develop programs funded through state, federal or private foundation grants? What opportunities are available for this type of funding?
- Cunningham Children's Home has a master campus plan that is a roadmap to the future for its main campus infrastructure. Phase One of this plan involves the building of a 30 bed residential, clinical and health services building and a Spiritual Life Center building. Phase One consists of a 10 million dollar ($10,000,000) capital campaign with the entire plan expected to require charitable dollars in excess of 35 million dollars ($35,000,000). A LINC project could develop and assist with a capital campaign strategy to raise these charitable dollars.
- The Cunningham Children's Home Foundation was created two years ago and is charged with managing the invested assets of the agency and raising new funds to support the work of the Children's Home. A LINC project could analyze the asset mix and investment strategies of the current endowment and develop recommendations for strategies to maximize the current endowment and to increase charitable dollars being added to the endowment.
Website Enhancement
Cunningham Children's Home has a website which has proven to be a viable asset for marketing our services to referring sources, recruiting new employees and increasing public awareness of our work. Cunningham would like the LINC project to explore ways to further enhance the website. Some current needs include- researching and developing appropriate links from and to the site
- creating ways for donors to make gifts on line and
- creating ability for individuals to complete an employee application on line.
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