Coming Soon: ChildServe’s Newest Group Home

This winter, ChildServe is building a new group home in Johnston that will be called the Johnston Duplex. Despite the current muddy conditions at the construction site, the Johnston Duplex is on track to completed by April 2017. By June, it will be filled with the sounds of ChildServe residents moving into their new rooms and exploring the house, which will be painted white. The duplex will replace two other older, less spacious ChildServe Homes.

When people first hear the term “group home,” they might not picture the comfortable, homey space that a ChildServe residential home offers. Even now, while the inside of the house looks like a workshop and rooms are outlined only by the wooden beams, plumbing, and the electrical wiring, it’s clear that the house has been planned with special thought given to the question, “How will this house help children with special healthcare needs live a great life?”

Willie Foster, Director of Facility Support at ChildServe, notes that everything from hallway width, doorways, and kitchen layout, to bathroom facilities and decorative choices were carefully centered around the concerns children with special needs face each day. The Johnston Duplex also has improved parking space which means better accessibility for parents and siblings visiting their child.

“When the building committee began meeting in 2015 we spoke with the architect and probably went through fifteen drafts of the blueprint before reaching the final product,” said Willie. “The decisions we made will help create a place that will be a safe, durable, and comfortable home to live in, no matter the special healthcare needs a child has.”

The ChildServe Homes program provides 24-hour nursing care and supervision in a group home setting to children who have conditions that can be difficult to support in an average family’s home. The Homes program commonly supports kids and young adults who have Autism, Traumatic Brain Injury, Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, and Muscular Dystrophy.