Kaleidoscope Inc.: A Changing Perspective on Child Care


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In Chicago, Illinois, there is a place where children and their families who are in desperate need of help, can turn. For the last 19 years, Kaleidoscope, Inc., a community-based child welfare agency has served children and their families who have been rejected by many other agencies but are "most in need." The agency is largely supported by grants and contracts with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Corrections.

Kaleidoscope has based its unusually successful operation on two concepts: normalization and unconditional care. To live out this philosophy of care, Kaleidoscope has three basic program models: The Therapeutic Foster Family Homes Program, The Youth Development Program, and The Satellite Family Outreach Program.

The Therapeutic Foster Family Homes Program

The Therapeutic Foster Family Homes Program serves over 70 children and youth through professional foster parents who are paid and trained to provide full-time care in their homes to handicapped and troubled youth. Furthermore, the program has a special Adolescent Parents Program for pregnant or new adolescent mothers. Finally, the STAR program (Specialized Team for AIDS Relief) provides care for babies with HIV or ARC (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). The Therapeutic Foster Care program enables children with severe physical or emotional needs, who may otherwise be institutionalized, to be cared for in a family environment. The positive effects of the foster care program can be seen and heard in the kind words of the foster families; "I’ve never met a sad or unhappy foster parent of a child who’s sick with AIDS. Yes, there’s a sadness linked to death. But you get paid back a hundred times — in the child’s smiles, in the memory of a child, in the fact that you’ve provided a loving home and a relationship for another human being."

The Youth Development Program

The Youth Development Program places and supervises over 44 older youth in community apartments to help those who have grown up in foster care to live on their own. Approximately 50 percent are adolescent parents. Kaleidoscope specifically seeks to help these older state wards who are considered to be the most difficult to help. Many of the youth lack basic literacy skills and do not have important work or living skills. The program focuses on job training, parenting skills, and basic education courses, and requires a one-year commitment. The program seeks to stabilize the behavior of these youth and at best, allow them to become totally self-sufficient by the age of 21.

The Satellite Family Outreach Program

The Satellite Family Outreach Program serves over 48 families in the Chicago area to reunite children in residential facilities with their families and to prevent unnecessary removal of children from homes. It is widely recognized as a model for working with families with seriously emotionally troubled children, who have experienced numerous difficulties and separations. Comprehensive services of the Satellite program include:

crisis intervention on a 24 hour basis,

individual and group counseling,

financial planning,

recreation and food assistance,

social work services,

sex and drug education,

first aid education, and

nutritional consultation.

In addition to these major programs, Kaleidoscope provides food, used clothing and goods, vocational counseling, and recreational services to the community. Finally, the organization just started the Kaleidoscope Training Institute to provide training to agencies and governments to improve the quality of life of children and families they serve. Kaleidoscope has just completed a 3-year evaluation effort on their in-home service program, and outcome data will soon be available

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