Officials at the recently opened SOS Children’s Village in Lockport like to cite an African proverb: “It takes an entire village to raise a child.”
This unusual permanent-care program for troubled children is now putting that theory to the test.
On May 17, the SOS Children’s Village accepted its first children-two preschool sisters taken from an abusive home in Joliet. Three others have arrived since then: a pair of brothers, ages 5 and 6, who have bounced from foster home to foster home, and a 6-month-old boy.
They are living in newly built subdivision houses with “mothers” who have been hired to raise them until they turn 18 or are otherwise ready to leave the nest. Unlike other group housing facilities that care for children en route to a more permanent home, the non-profit SOS Children’s Village intends to be the child’s final destination.
“Our real niche is for kids who are unlikely to be adopted and who are unlikely to be reunified (with their parents),” said SOS Village director Bill Mathis. “Why should they be floating around in the system when a stable, long-term option is there?”
The village consists of 10 houses that, at full capacity, each will contain six children and a parent.
“The philosophy provides that every child needs a home, every child needs siblings and every child needs a parent,” Mathis said. “And SOS has found that the key parent is the mother. To provide support to the mother and the children is the concept of the village.”
The village concept may be new to Illinois but not to the rest of the world. Hermann Gmeiner founded the non-profit SOS in 1949 in Austria to care for World War II orphans, and since then more than 300 SOS Children’s Villages have set up operations in 120 countries worldwide, caring for 150,000 children annually.
The SOS Village in Lockport was proposed in 1985. The groundbreaking for the state and federally funded village was in October 1992. “I think they have successfully launched something that is a real jewel for the area in which it’s located,” said Lockport Mayor Richard Dystrup.
The Lockport village is the second U.S. SOS facility. The first, in the Ft. Lauderdale area, opened its doors in January 1993 and now has 23 children living there.
The Lockport setting is rural, with the $5.8 million subdivision built in what was an unincorporated-and now annexed-eastern area of the city.
On a recent summer’s day, a little boy rode a bicycle along a winding street in the village.
The boy zipped up a driveway and found his little brother playing with two younger girls as two women looked on.
“Mom, watch me,” the boy said as he and his brother started playing catch with a felt-coated ball and Velcro mats. “Watch me, Mom.”
The boys had met “Mom” four days earlier.
“I consider myself doing a form of ministry in providing these children with what they’re lacking, such as a stable environment,” said Toni Wagner, 52, a Franciscan nun and the brothers’ new mother. “I’m fulfilling my religious life as well as my own personal intent of always helping others.”
Wagner’s goals were a match for SOS’ requirements, because the organization expects the parents, all mothers, to stay on-without getting married-as long as the children are there.
“We want a parent who can make a long-term commitment,” Mathis said. “The founder thought that a single parent would make a greater commitment to raising a generation of kids than a married couple.” This, he said, is because their studies showed that married couples tended to stay on fewer years. As for the parent’s gender, Mathis said that SOS has not ruled out ever hiring a “father,” and that there are male role models within the village, but the preference remains for a mother.
Virginia Prater, 51, a parent-in-training from Joliet, already has raised four children and is now divorced. “I have time, and I’ve always said if my kids were grown, I would like to devote my time to giving loving and caring and understanding to kids who never had a parent,” she said.
“I wasn’t really interested in getting married at all, but I wanted to be a parent,” said Michele Haldeman, 33, a former day-care worker from Waukesha, Wis., who is now mother to the two sisters and infant boy at SOS.
She marveled at the transformation that the children-particularly the two girls-have undergone since they arrived more than a month earlier.
“They’re kids now. Before, they were little adults,” she said.
The SOS children are referred by the Department of Children and Family Services and must fit specific requirements. The village only accepts children ages 10 and under who come from situations in which parental rights may not have been terminated, but the “likelihood of reunification is really poor,” Mathis said.
Ben Wolf, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who sued DCFS on charges that it is not taking care of the children in its custody, wonders why adoption isn’t a better option for the SOS children, since they are so unlikely to return to their biological parents.
“Isn’t a child better off in a permanent adoptive home with a good family than in even the best congregate setting?” he asked.
Mathis said he is often asked why the SOS parents don’t adopt the children. “I can’t go out and hire a parent to adopt kids,” he explained, adding that if a mother did adopt the children, she would technically have the right to move them out of the village. “To me it’s not logical.”
Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy said Wolf’s criticisms stem from unrealistic expectations.
“What it comes down to is that in Illinois there are hundreds of children who do not have a place to reside,” Murphy said. “A lot of kids will never go back home and are essentially unadoptable.”
He added that the Lockport SOS Village would be filling a vital gap even if it could provide stability for only a few years. “I think you have some very dedicated people who are going to try very hard with some very damaged children,” Murphy said. “Will they succeed in all cases? No. Will they be better than most of what’s out there? Yes.”
