Kidspeace

KidsPeace is a private charity dedicated to serving the behavioral and mental health needs of children, preadolescents and teens. Founded in 1882, KidsPeace provides a unique children’s psychiatric hospital, a comprehensive range of specialized and intensive and therapeutic residential treatment programs, accredited educational services and a variety of community-based treatment programs and foster care and family services to give hope, help and healing to kids facing crisis.

KidsPeace offers services in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

KidsPeace was founded by the president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, William Thurston in response to a small pox epidemic that had left many children in the area homeless. In 1895, Captain James Wiley donated a Salisbury Township home and six acres of surrounding land to the charity. Afterwards, the organization came to be known as "Wiley House" and remained so for many years, until they officially changed their name to "KidsPeace" in January 1992.

Treatment

The largest KidsPeace facility is the Orchard Hills Campus located outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. It is a massive convert|300|acre|km2|sing=on campus with such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a ropes course, an apple orchard, playgrounds, a gym with wrap-around track, driving range, multiple athletic fields, recreation lounges and more. To educate the children, KidsPeace utilizes their own private schools, staffed with specially trained teachers. There are schools both on and off campus and where a child goes to school can depend on which program they are enrolled in.

According to their official website, there were 8,628 children in KidsPeace programs/centers in 2005 and over 2,000 children’s professionals were trained at the KidsPeace Institute that same year. KidsPeace is one of America's oldest children's charities and has treated over 140,000 children in need since 1882.

KidsPeace is accredited by The Joint Commission in Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Other accreditations include the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and The Commission on International and Trans-Regional Accreditation. KidsPeace does not discriminate in regard to admissions in terms of sex, race, creed, color, national origin, LEP (Limited English Proficiency), religious beliefs, disabilities or handicapping conditions. [Kidspeace: [http://www.kidspeace.org/outcomes.htm Outcomes and Measures] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.kidspeace.org Kidspeace.org] - Official Kidspeace website
* [http://www.teencentral.net Teencentral.net] - Teen help site, run by Kidspeace