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Date Posted: Tue Sep 11th, 2007
Willow Grove, PA: Aldersgate Youth Service Bureau (“Aldersgate”), a community social service agency established 35 years ago to assist children, individuals, and their families in Eastern Montgomery County, recognizes and celebrates Marsha Grabois, LSW for five years of excellent social service work to local children, families, and other agency clients.
Grabois currently facilitates Aldersgate’s SCOH (“Services to Children in their Own Homes”) program and also counsels a small caseload of Aldersgate clients for mental health issues. “I like to affect change most where the change needs to occur, and that’s directly in the home,” said Grabois. “SCOH services are real, potent, and done right on the spot – it’s completely hands-on.”
“Services to Children in their Own Homes” is a child-welfare directed program providing intensive, in-home social work services to help keep vulnerable families intact. SCOH workers always assess family environments for child safety and proper adult supervision. Social workers typically provide SCOH services to entire families, collectively, helping individual members lead more productive, harmonious lives. SCOH services are also designed to help identified families avoid potentially disruptive separations associated with foster care placement. SCOH support often includes in-home personal and couples counseling, parenting education, and advocacy for appropriate medical and dental care, among other things.
Grabois, a resident of Montgomery County and a married mother of two, received her undergraduate degree from Penn State University and earned her Masters in Social Work at Temple University. Having had a personal interest in adoption services, being an adoptive parent herself, she chose not to return to a promising Philadelphia-based career in business consulting but rather pursue helping families directly. Prior to Aldersgate, she’d gained much in-home experience providing similar SCOH services for families located in Bucks County.
Aldersgate has been protecting children from abuse and neglect by strengthening families through SCOH services since 1992. Each year, approximately 20 to 25 families and their children participate in Aldersgate’s intensive SCOH program. Most agency referrals come from Montgomery County’s Office of Children and Youth, either from Norristown directly, or from its County Court Annex located nearby in Willow Grove. Other referrals might come indirectly from local schools, area police departments, or concerned extended family members and neighbors. Currently, the agency is serving six local families. Average onsite, face-to-face visits last about 2 hours per week, but are heavily supplemented by phone calls, letters, and other forms of continuing contact.
Aldersgate Youth Service Bureau supports area residents’ mental health and emotional well being through the provision of individual, family, and marital counseling, foster care placement, drug and alcohol prevention education and programming in area schools and the community at-large, and community outreach services which target at-risk minority youth. To learn more about Aldersgate and its different programs, to become a foster care parent, or to make a donation, please call officer manager Janet Zaro at 215.657.4545. Visit Aldersgate online at www.aldersgateservices.org for agency information, a staff directory, and more.