Each house also has a cozily decorated therapy room and laundry facilities. An enrichment center, where children do homework, and a large recreation room are works in progress in the building for older children. Executive Director Dave Moorehead said he hopes community members, who always have been kind to the school, will help provide the finishing touches. The safe home also has a visiting room. The ratio of child-care workers to children at the safe home is 3 to 10 during the first and second shifts and 2 to 10 on third shift.
More staff is added when an infant is at the safe home.
Infants are accepted when they are part of a sibling group. There is one clinical case coordinator for every eight children. The staff tries to make the environment as normal as possible for the children, said Bob Paolino, director of the safe home program. The younger children have naptime, story time, arts and crafts and a lot of playtime. Staff celebrates birthdays and holidays with the children and each child creates a scrapbook about him or herself so that if they do go to a foster home, the new caretakers will know a little about them.