Freedom House celebrates new nursery
Pictured left to right: Jennifer Hancock, president and CEO at Volunteers of America; Terri Stewart, regional manager at Bright Horizons Family Solutions; Amy Vandever, division vice president at Bright Horizons Family Solutions; Randy Coe, president and CEO of Kosair Charities; Craig Scherman, advisory council member with Kosair Charities; and Micki Thomas, director of HR and IT projects with YUM! Brands.
On July 10, our Freedom House Program celebrated the completion of a new nursery and mother’s group room made possible by long-time supporters Kosair Charities; The Bright Horizons Foundation for Children; The Children’s Center at YUM! Brands; YUM! Brands, and Volunteers of America Positive Change Society donor and volunteer, Micki Thomas. The celebration and ribbon cutting was attended by Randy Coe, president and CEO of Kosair Charities; Craig Scherman, member of Kosair Charities Advisory Council; Amy Vandever, division vice president at Bright Horizons Family Solutions; Terri Stewart, regional manager at Bright Horizons; and Micki Thomas, who is also the director of HR and IT projects with YUM! Brands, among others.
During this special occasion, we celebrated an important milestone and learned that that three mothers receiving services at our Freedom House program had all given birth to three babies within twenty-four hours of one another. Babies Azaryah, Andrew, and Myla are all home with their mothers at Freedom House, safe, sound and healthy.
The enhanced space includes a warm and bright nursery containing toys, books, games, furnishings and more for newborns, infants and children to enjoy while their mothers attend counseling sessions in the neighboring group room. The mother’s group room also received a makeover and is now a more comfortable and healing environment for clinical activities, including individual and group therapy. The new space was designed to provide more space for family projects, such as therapeutic art sessions with the Kentucky Center’s Arts in Healing program.
“Kosair Charities is proud to be part of collaborative projects of this kind,” said Randy Coe. “ This space is art with love. Art with a purpose, not just art for art’s sake. And it is saving the lives of newborns and their mothers every day.”
Freedom House is the only licensed, evidence-based residential program in Louisville that serves women with addiction who are pregnant, postpartum and/or parenting young children, who also live with their mothers while receiving services. Thanks to the program’s other recent expansion that was completed in January 2015, Freedom House has served 34 women, with 13 babies born healthy and drug-free, in the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2015. With recent reports indicating the skyrocketing number of babies born exposed to substances in Kentucky, Freedom House’s expansion of residential and programmatic capacity could not be timelier.