We are proud to announce Hephzibah’s 2020 HeartPrint award winners: Zack Zubkus and Nina Petrosino, both of whom are extraordinary young people and both just graduated from Oak Park River Forest High School (OPRF).

Zack Zubkis

Zack Zubkus has been involved with Hephzibah since 2018 as a Big Brother and as a Summer Day Care volunteer. He has stood out since he began, for his dedication to the children, his responsibility, and the personal touches he brings to the work he’s done.

As one of the volunteer coordinators says of Zack: “I wanted to contact you [Hannah Weigel, Hephzibah’s Volunteer Manager] about a particular volunteer. While all of the volunteers have been so, so wonderful and I am so grateful for all of their help, one has truly gone above and beyond. His name is Zack. He comes in regularly, knows the kids’ names and knows them personally. He is an absolute natural with the kids, too, and I’m sure he will be so missed by them!! He has truly blown the “Hephzibah volunteer” job description out of the water. He is caring, kind and silly with all staff and kids and we are all so grateful for everything he’s done for us this summer. He undoubtedly deserves recognition for all his hard work!!”.

Zack chose to become involved with Hephzibah at the recommendation of a family friend who had been involved with Hephzibah for many years.

“One of my favorite memories at Hephzibah was the first time my little brother beat me at connect 4,” Zack said. “He had been pretending like he had no idea how to play, but he suddenly pulled out a bunch of crazy moves and won the game. I never had a chance and haven’t ever won a game with him!”

“Another favorite memory is my last day working at the summer camp program Hephzibah held at Lincoln Elementary. When I finally left that day, several hours later than usual, I had to wade through a whole mob of kids who were trying to keep me from leaving.”

Next year Zack will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, working towards a degree in Nursing. “Working with Hephzibah has allowed me to meet so many amazing people, both kids and staff…It’s been a great time.”

Nina Petrosino

Nina Petrosino, our other 2020 HeartPrint Award winner, has been an active volunteer with Hephzibah for several years; she has been an OPRF Huskie Helper for 4 years, a Huskie Helper officer for two years, and a Big Sister since November 2019.

“I chose to volunteer for Hephzibah mostly because I admire Hephzibah’s mission to help young children in a transitional time of their life,” Nina said. “I also chose Hephzibah because the OPRF Huskie Helpers was such a fun way to get involved. It was great to join other kids my age who wanted to work together to plan events for the kids living at Hephzibah Home.”

“One of my favorite memories was when I was watching an OPRF football game with the Hephzibah kids. This particular game, the kids were so excited, they could barely sit still in the stands. I remember dancing with the kids who were trying to copy some of the cheerleaders and cheering. It was so fun to see the kids have such a great time and share it with them.”

“Another great memory is of the 2019 Rodeo [a fun, annual event organized by the OPRF Huskie Helpers for the kids of Hephzibah Home]. I was the selected DJ for the day and I was sitting near the speaker—the kids couldn’t get enough of the song “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X and we had it on repeat, the kids didn’t get tired of singing and dancing! They were so eager to show me their newly learned dance moves, it was an awesome time!”

Nina says her `work with Hephzibah affected her in many positive ways.

“Connecting with the kids has been so enjoyable,” she said. “It introduced me to people of different backgrounds than my own and listen to their experiences; this has made me a more sympathetic person. It was an honor to surround myself with these amazing kids and be a role model to them. My time at Hephzibah has shaped me into the person I am today.”

Next fall, Nina will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study Political Science. According to Nina, “One day, I hope to create change within the system.”

Hephzibah is truly grateful to these remarkable volunteers. Zack and Nina, we wish you all the best of everything as you embark on your next journey, we will miss you! But we know that wherever you go, you’ll take a piece of Hephzibah with you.

Please click here to check out current volunteer opportunities.

“Hephzibah is the place to be.”

“I love coming to Hephzibah every day because I love the food and the teachers.”

“We love coming to summer camp because we get to go outside a lot.”

That’s just some of the feedback from this summer’s campers—Covid-19 isn’t stopping the fun for Hephzibah’s Summer Day Camp program!

Camp is in full-swing and the kids are having a blast while following safety protocol guidelines for the novel coronavirus. There are still open spots available for Sessions 2 and 3 if you are looking for childcare or fun for your elementary school-aged children. As always our program fees are on a sliding scale to help meet the needs of all families.

Hephzibah Summer Day Camp goes from 8 am – 6 pm, Monday through Friday. Three, 3-week sessions are being offered at two elementary school locations in Oak Park, IL. We have a few openings for the remaining two sessions(Session 2: June 29 – July 17 (Closed July 3), and Session 3: July 20 – August 7) so please click here if you are interested in learning more.

Per COVID safety-guidelines, camp group sizes are limited to 10 children per 2 staff-members. All of the children and staff wear masks when indoors and outdoors (when 6 feet distance cannot be maintained). Groups do not interact with each other at any time throughout the day. Additionally, parents or visitors are not allowed in the buildings and there is curbside drop-off and pick-up. All high touch surfaces are disinfected every 2 hours and lunch and snacks are served in individual packaging.

This might sound restricting, but the children have been champions adjusting to the changes and are able to do almost all of the activities they enjoyed during other summers with the exception of going to the pool and taking the bus for field trips.

The kids spend the days doing specialty activities, themed days, group games, art projects, water days, community exploration, playing with toys, learning new games, dancing, karaoke, cartooning, scooters, bike rides and time with friends. A new addition to this year’s program includes a partnering with the Oak Park Education Foundation to offer Lego Mindstorm programming classes to our children via Zoom.

The children love water day, cooking projects (so far they have made smores, butter, and banana pudding), hide and seek, games in the gym, playing with friends and toys, spending time with the staff, finger knitting, riding scooters and bikes, “learning about more people,” making a tik-tok video, kickball, nature week, watching roly-poly bugs and ants, dancing, searching for the camp mascots who are hidden in the building, making a canoe and forts, and playing outside.

The children have adapted very well to handing the safety protocols. They wear masks and maintain social distance with few complaints.

“We reinforce these safety protocols by giving verbal praise for being a “masked crusader” and “keeping your force field up,” says Amy O’Rourke, Hephzibah’s Director of Day Care.

“The staff and children are really enjoying the opportunity to have more 1:1 time. We are able to offer bike rides and scooter rides in the community, and more walking field trips in the community that are more difficult with larger groups.”

As one parent reached out to us, saying “Thank you so much to you and all your dedicated team members who have made Camp Hephzibah 2020 a truly great time for our two campers. Our children are absolutely loving it. And we’re all appreciating your care and concern for everyone’s health and safety. The whole situation is Such a relief from quarantine blues.“

If you are interested in enrolling your children in Hephzibah’s Summer Day Camp for Sessions 2 and/or 3, please contact Annette Anderson, aanderson@hephzibahhome.org.

In Spring 2020, “keeping children safe” took on a whole new meaning as the COVID-19 pandemic mandated shelter-in-place orders in Illinois. The 26 children living at Hephzibah Home were going stir-crazy; it took the whole team to keep the kids connected, educated, active, enriched and entertained for three months.

“[Virtual learning] was challenging at first,” admits Hephzibah Education Coordinator, Eliana Callan. “We had 26 different learning plans on different devices and platforms and more Zoom meetings than I could count.”

With more than two dozen children to educate and a lot of special needs to address, Callan and her coworkers spun into action.

“It was an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ situation,” she recalls. “Our goal was to help the children stay connected to school and to the teachers who had become such an important part of their lives.”

After a short adjustment period, the children adapted surprisingly well to their virtual classrooms and continued to make academic progress—a fact that Callan attributes to the dedication of a committed group of Oak Park educators.

“We have so many heartwarming stories about these amazing educators who went out of their way to help our kids,” Callan notes. “The teachers dropped off schoolwork, made short videos to keep the children motivated and even organized a drive-by parade to let them know how much they were missed.”

Meanwhile, our therapists were hard at work helping the children cope with the emotional impact of COVID-19.

“Many of the children have a history of relational trauma and broken family bonds,” says Hephzibah Clinical Supervisor Ashley Ice. “So our first priority was to preserve the nurturing and supportive relationships that these children had developed with Hephzibah therapists, social workers, staff and volunteers.”

But how does one safely stay connected during a global pandemic?
“Connection is connection, whether it’s virtual or in real life,” says Ice. “We masked up for in-person therapy sessions and encouraged the
children to talk about their feelings of loss and isolation. We also encouraged them to use the coping tools that they had learned upon their arrival at Hephzibah— tools that had helped them become more resilient, such as meditation, breathing exercises, yoga and positive
self-talk.”

Meanwhile, our volunteer Big Siblings and Heartmates stayed in touch via phone calls, letters and Zoom sessions; our Homework Helpers read stories on video; and our Paws for Strength pet therapists shared entertaining videos from a pup’s point of view. With school shut down and our volunteers on hiatus, we also had a lot of empty hours to fill. So Hephzibah Education Behavior Interventionist Molly Pyne, our self-described “coronavirus cruise director,” scheduled a brainstorming session with fellow staff members, including our after-school Day Care team. Her goal? To come up with creative ideas for activities that would beef up the fun factor.

“We wanted to keep the kids busy and active after their schoolwork was done,” Pyne explains. “So we came up with an extensive menu of afternoon activities, from indoor sports such as bowling and hockey to freeze-dance competitions and karaoke.”

With each extension of the stay-at-home order, our staff members brainstormed again to keep the fun fresh and the surprises coming—from build-your-own robots to a crazy hair day with spray-on hair colors.

“Even though we were not leaving the house and life was far from normal,” says Pyne, “the kids were having fun every single day and so were we.”

This past spring, as the community shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Family Based Services Director Julie Dvorsky and her staff began working overtime to provide critically needed support for the 142 families served by our Foster Care and Intact Family services programs.

“A lot of our families were hit hard by the pandemic and needed our services more than ever,” says Dvorsky. “We had elderly foster grandparents who were struggling to care for multiple generations in their homes and intact families that had already been pushed to the breaking point by a variety of stressors before the pandemic made life exponentially more difficult.”

And these stressors can be a contributing factor to abuse or neglect.

According to childwelfare.gov, in federal fiscal year (FFY) 2018, about 4.3 million reports were made nationally to child protective services concerning the safety and well-being of approximately 7.8 million children. Many of these cases were identified at schools and doctor’s offices. While shelter-in-place regulations were active in Illinois, these sources of identifying neglect or trauma weren’t readily available, leaving children vulnerable.

The role of Hephzibah’s Intact Family Services department became even more important as they were on the front-line of helping at-risk families manage new trials and tribulations.

As these vulnerable families coped with the additional hardships caused by the coronavirus—from unemployment to rising food bills to school closures—our Family-Based Services team did whatever was necessary to help them stay safe and strong, including:

Grocery shopping and deliveries for elderly or physically vulnerable parents and guardians
Grocery store gift cards to feed financially strapped families
Face masks to keep everyone safe
Chromebooks for virtual learning
Ventra cards for public transportation
Weekly caseworker check-ins
Virtual therapy sessions
Virtual support groups for foster parents
Zoom yoga and other virtual activities for foster families
Amazon deliveries of sports equipment, musical instruments, arts and crafts supplies, activity kits and household necessities
Virtual visits with volunteer Hephzibah mentors
Birthday boxes with party supplies based on a theme selected by the child

Hephzibah is committed to helping children thrive and families flourish. As fall and winter approach and flu season gets underway, it’s possible that our vulnerable families may need to quarantine again. If you’re interested in donating an item from our “Shelter in Place Wish list” please click here.

Hephzibah is so fortunate and grateful to have such loyal, committed donors who share our dedication to the welfare of children and their families.

We recently received a recurring donation that was so heartwarming we had to share it with you. One of our newest recurring donors, Maureen of Naperville, wrote this note with her gift:

“In thanks for the wonderful loving services you continue to provide to my grandchildren: Ciara, Liam and Fiona.”

The three children are currently participating in the summer camp program at Oak Park’s Beye school but attend Mann elementary during the school year. Fiona and Liam are twins and are in first grade while Ciara will be a 5th grader this year.

We are so thrilled to have Maureen as part of the Hephzibah family and are so grateful for her generous contribution.

Recurring donations are a wonderful way to support Hephzibah’s mission of helping children thrive and families flourish. When you set up your donation, all you have to do is select the “recurring donation” checkbox and your donation will occur automatically on a monthly basis. This can be a great way to offset the burden of a larger donation but still help support Hephzibah in a significant way. Please click here to donate.

Thank you to all of our recurring donors and a special thank you to Maureen!

While many of us are thinking about the upcoming school year and wondering about our children’s education and safety, Hephzibah’s Family Based Services program is working on helping our foster and intact families meet the very-real burden of preparing their children to return to school, including coming up with school supplies for 400 children.

Purchasing all the school supplies needed for the school year is a financial burden many families simply cannot afford.

Hephzibah’s board members and their families will be getting together the first week of August to help pack and stuff 400 backpacks to distribute to the families we serve. Due to COVID-19 restrictions we are not able to allow extra volunteers, but we are looking for donations of backpacks and necessary supplies with which to fill them.

This fall will be especially difficult for new foster families, some of whom have never fostered children before. These gracious families intentionally chose to welcome high-needs children into their homes who need extra emotional, physical, medical and educational support. These are the children who need IEPs and extra help to get through a typical school day, let alone face the challenges brought on by e-learning.

Families in our intact program are already trying to overcome the boundaries of poverty, homelessness, job insecurity and a myriad of other factors during a pandemic to safely care for their children. One mother of four told her case worker that she would have to chose between preparing her children for school or paying rent next month – an impossible decision for a hard-working mother to make.

“Helping with school supplies is just one simple thing we can take off their plate,” says Juliet Yera, Hephzibah’s Development Director. “It allows these families time and energy to tackle the more pressing needs of their children.”

With just weeks left until the fall semester is set to begin, many families still don’t know how their students will be learning this fall let alone what children will need to participate in e-learning.

The National Retail Federation’s annual Back-to-School Spending Survey shows that consumers expect to spend a record amount of money to prepare students for school this year, due largely in part to e-learning plans in place across the country as the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continues to rise.

The 2020 data shows that parents with children in elementary school through high school plan to spend an average of $789.49 per family preparing for back to school, up from the previous record of $696.70 parents said they expected to pay last year.

People are stepping up to help us meet the needs of these families. Hephzibah received a generous donation of school supplies from Enchanted Backpack, a charitable organization serving under-resourced elementary and middle schools in the Chicagoland area. In addition, our wonderful Western Auxiliary is sponsoring 100 backpacks that they will purchase, fill, and deliver to our offices.

We are still in need of backpacks, folders, pencils, pens, spiral notebooks, glue sticks, book covers, erasers, pencil bags and binders.

We, and the families we serve, would be extremely grateful if you’d take a moment out of your busy days and choose an item or several from our Amazon Wishlist to help our families as they navigate the new and difficult terrain of going back to school during a pandemic. Thank you so much for your generous donations and for helping the families we serve as we get through this difficult time!

“I didn’t get to see her for so long!” 7-year-old David said last summer at Camp HepSIBah when he finally got to see his big sister Tamara.

Both children had come to Hephzibah in late 2018 in need of healing from trauma and neglect. Tamara responded to care quickly and was placed in a foster home, but David needed additional support and stayed at Hephzibah Home, our therapeutic residential home. Both children received the care they needed; unfortunately, it meant that they were separated and living in different homes for the next stage of their healing journeys.

75 percent of all children in substitute care are separated from one or more of their siblings because many foster families don’t have the room or the resources to care for sibling groups or because the children themselves need different levels of care. It is often the last, and most devastating, loss for children who have already been separated from their parents, home, school and community.

Siblings enjoying a picnic at beautiful Camp HepSIBah a couple of years ago. For many of the children, this is their first time enjoying camping.

Camp HepSIBah was founded in 2000 to give separated brothers and sisters the chance to spend time together. For David and Tamara, it meant that they could be together to canoe, sing songs, make s’mores and get to spend time together as siblings again. Every summer, brothers and sisters living in different group, foster or adoptive homes have been reunited at this rustic woodland retreat in northwestern Illinois to create shared summer memories.

That is, until this past summer, when we were unable to hold Camp HepSIBah due to COVID-19.

This has been a big disappointment for the children. Hephzibah’s staff have done everything to get creative to put siblings in touch with each other via video conferencing; visits are now happening in-person but it is limited as the children are staying outside and using recommended guidelines for social distancing.

“This is all so heartbreaking as it is another loss for kids in care,” said Development Director Juliet Yera.

Camp HepSIBah is funded completely through private philanthropy; we are grateful to this year’s sponsors who have been extra flexible and allowed us to pivot the use of funds they’ve already donated. Special thanks to:

Chaddick Foundation: They have allowed us to use the funds they normally donate to sibling camp to help support the purchase of a new van for the foster care program.
Hephzibah’s Western Auxiliary: The funds raised by the Western Auxiliary Board from their event, Rock N’ Roll for Your Heart and Soul, went to help prepare 100 backpacks stuffed with school supplies that our case workers delivered to families. Board members and their family members packed the backpacks themselves!
Hephzibah’s Children’s Resale Event: the proceeds from our resale events support camp but we only had one sale this year due to COVID; we redirected the funds from the fall 2019 sale for general program support.
9/11 LemonAid: Last year Hephzibah was awarded $16,500 for Camp HepSIBah by the 9/11 LemonAid “Kids Helping Kids Charity Lemonade Stand” held on the 700 Block of Bonnie Brae in River Forest. The generous community volunteers who support this event allowed us to use the funds where we needed them most to help children stay connected with their family members during the pandemic.

A camper enjoying the horses at Camp HepSIBah.

“We are incredibly grateful for this generous support,” says Julie Dvorksy, director of Family Based Services.

Despite using everything at our disposal to connect the children living at Hephzibah Home and in foster care with their siblings, the absence of Sibling Camp this year is still heartbreaking. We do everything in our power to provide normalcy and happy experiences for the children in our care to replace some of their tragic memories, but things like pandemics put a wrench in our plans.

“I know it’s not realistic to give every child instant happiness. It’s just one of the reasons that I do this work and always have,” says Juliet Yera. “We always aim for the light at the end of the tunnel for a kid or family who has struggled to find their way. We’re fighting for a better place where these children can be safe, loved and nurtured and that is what I want for them – something more, something better.”

100% of Cookbook Sales by local resident Mary DiSomma to Support Hephzibah and Infant Welfare Society
Mary DiSomma

Mary DiSomma is many things: philanthropist, podiatrist, entrepreneur, and mother of four grown children. She is also an enthusiastic and imaginative baker; her first book, A Gift of Cookies: Recipes To Share With Family and Friends, is expected to be available for purchase in October.

Mary is generously donating ALL proceeds to Hephzibah and the OPRF Infant Welfare Society.

Gain new artistic presentation ideas, broaden and enhance your cookie repertoire, and pick up new baking skills – knowing you’ll also be contributing to the welfare of children and families with your purchase.

Her cookbook covers an extensive array of cookie recipes in categories such as biscotti, rolled cookies, drop cookies and holiday favorites. Strikingly photographed, the cookies are imaginatively displayed on distinctive designed objects Mary has collected during her travels.

Treat yourself and gift this to friends and family this holiday season. And help us spread the word—selling out the first run of 2,000 books will yield $40,000 in much-needed funds to each non-profit.

Pre-orders are now available on Mary’s website; the book will ship in October, just in time for the holidays. Surprise someone who has been stuck at home with a copy of the book!

Follow Mary DiSomma:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlameItOnBiscotti/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blameitonbiscotti/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/BlameItOnBiscotti

On Friday, September 18th, Hephzibah’s Board of Directors hosted their Annual Meeting to address the relevant issue of racial equity and justice for families and communities of color. The meeting, which was held via Zoom, was attended by a cross-section of Hephzibah staff, board members, representatives of state and county child welfare agencies, foster families, and others.

Robert Blackwell

Elke Hansen

The 97 attendees listened as presenters Robert Blackwell, Chief, Office of Racial Equity Practice at Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and Elke Hansen, Caritas Family Solutions, shared their insights and experiences to help us better serve and partner with vulnerable communities.

Hephzibah is committed to inclusion, racial equity and justice; these issues have significant impact on the children and families we serve. This will be an ongoing commitment for Hephzibah as we move forward to better provide for the families we serve. The slideshow presentation (without speakers) is below.

We are two months into our e-learning institute at Hephzibah Home and most of our kids are doing well thanks in large part to our incredible staff who have improvised and supported them while they transition to remote learning.

All-day screen time was exhausting for so many of the kids, especially the youngest ones. We worked with their teachers to add in more recess breaks and we created “chill zones” in each of our classrooms with sensory items that help the children relax and reset so they can focus on their school work when they go back to their chromebooks for more e-learning.

We’ve hired extra staff to accommodate these high-need children during remote learning and we are so grateful to have the extra hands, especially the special education teachers! We were only able to hire these extra staff members due to the support of our donors; these teachers work one-on-one with the children who are having the most difficult time and have been vital in helping them succeed.

In addition to extra staff members, we also purchased extra-large room dividers so that the children wouldn’t get distracted by their friends in neighboring rooms. This has helped tremendously as the kids concentrate on their school work without extra sound and noises.

Several of the children living at Hephzibah Home will be returning to school in-person at their therapeutic schools – these schools have much lower student/teacher ratios and are for children with the highest needs. We are happy that they will be returning but are being very careful in training them how to interact safely once they leave the home. Our kids have not been out of our care since before COVID hit in March and a bit of reorientation will be needed.

Covid-19 has been difficult on all of us as we confront the isolation and stress of the pandemic; we are so thankful for our generous donors who have stepped up to allow us to provide the extra care needed by the children of Hephzibah Home. Even in such a trying time, the resilience of these kids is remarkable.