For 22 years, stressed-out parents in dire need of an emergency timeout from their children have found help at the Bay Area Crisis Nursery.
No matter the hour, the modest but attractive house in Concord has kept its porch light on for parents struggling to maintain their sanity while dealing with a range of pressure-cooker situations, from a lost job to a lost home.
Here, parents find a safe haven to leave their children while they take care of other pressing matters or get a needed respite. Parents can leave children for up to 30 days in the care of trained staff.
As the only facility of its kind in the Bay Area, the nonprofit organization rolls out its welcome mat to anyone in the nine-county region, with the one caveat being that it only accepts children 5 and younger.
Being unable to serve children in the 6 to 11 age group ate away at founder Sister Ann Weltz.
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“Emergency timeout from their children” and “get a needed respite” are statements that I find as evidence of the total selfishness of our culture. I know that there are situations where it is a good idea to get children out of the house while the parents sort things through, but in these cases it would be more accurate to say that the children need a emergency time out from their parents. Up to 30 days seems more like a kennel than a nursery.
3 comments
30 days? You have got to be kidding?
I understand the need for emergency help for people who have no relatives or friends to pitch in for a few hours (or maybe even days in a traumatic crisis.) But 30 days? I haven’t had 30 days respite in 24 years…. (not that I would know what to do without the family if I had 30 days on my hands)
To a child, this must feel like abandonment!
You know, when my kids were infants, I took them everywhere with me. There was no place I wanted to go without them. And they knew it. I’d like to think it’s partly responsible for the kind of people they are now. (On the other hand, now that I think about it, there are places they like to go without me. But I’m big guy. I can handle it.)
While I understand the cynicism, I actually think that a program like this is a worthy endeavor. I can imagine a number of scenarios where access to this program could mean the difference between family survival and the desolution of the family into unattached wards of the state.
Just a quick list:
1. a single mother dealing with severe post-partum depression
2. a widowed parent dealing with the initial rage (or apathy) of great loss
3. an addicted parent with the motivation and opportunity to “get straight”
4. a parent coping with temporary homelessness
5. a parent hospitalized
6. a single parent who is unjustly arrested for… I don’t know… perhaps protesting against abortion?
I ‘m not sure how valid it is but there seems to be a general wisdom that the worst thing that can happen to a lot of families is to get caught in the web of governmental Child Protection Agencies. If so, this would seem to be a viable family-saving alternative.