Company Profile
Methodist Children's Home Society
Company Overview
Methodist Children's Home Society is a children's social service facility providing foster care, adoption and adolescent residential treatment services.
Our residential program is home to 70 emotionally impaired boys who are housed in seven separate cottages.
Company History
Methodist Children’s Home Society – Historical Overview
Our mission “…to meet the Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual needs of the children in our care.”
Methodist Children’s Home Society is a multi-faceted agency. It was founded in 1917 by a group of Methodist women to work with children who were orphaned at a time when only church organizations and some private social agencies provided for the care of the needy in our society.
The agency originally operated out of a house in Highland Park, then on a farm in what is now downtown Farmington, and, in 1929, we moved to our campus on Six Mile Road in Redford.
Our agency’s primary focus is children who have been subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse or children who have been severely neglected by their parents.
Our foster home component provides treatment for children in a family atmosphere. Foster Homes serve children from birth through age 17.
Our residential program provides space for 70 children. Our children are involved in an intense treatment program that includes direct therapy with our social workers and other professionals. We also provide occupational and recreational therapy programs. And, of course, our children attend school.
While most of our children attend special education programs, some of our children are integrated into regular classrooms. We also provide a supplemental education program during the summer months. Many of our children are behind in reading and math skills. We emphasize these subjects in our summer education program.
We teach children skills for independence that include cooking, how to use banks, reading city maps to get around and many of the other skills that parents normally teach their children. We even had an investment course for some of our older youngsters run by a stockbroker.
We provide adoption services to the children who are unable to return to their birth homes. In fact, most of the adoptions we complete now are of children for whom parental rights are terminated by the courts for cause. While we occasionally place infants for adoption, a majority of our placements are for older, special needs children. No fees are charged for adoption.
In March 1993, we began another program as a joint venture with a United Methodist Church in Jackson and a grade school in a disadvantaged neighborhood in the community. The goal of the program is to end a continuing cycle of illiteracy, as a start, by establishing a one-to-one mentoring of “at-risk” elementary students in second grade.
We train mentors, who are volunteers. Children meet with their mentors at least once a week at their school. While the focus is on reading, the children and their mentors have branched in to other academic areas such as earth sciences, poetry and prose. More importantly, the relationships between the children and their adult mentors have become very important.
The success of this program led to the establishment of a program at a second elementary school in Jackson and programs in Shaftsburg, near Lansing, and Howard City, near Grand Rapids, in 2003.
In 1995 the agency began a construction and renovation project to build new residences for the children we serve. The old style cottages, while attractive, were not functional for the sexually and physically abused children we serve today. Each cottage has space for 10 children and provides for improved supervision of troubled children while preserving their privacy with individual bedrooms and their safety with fire sprinkler systems.
Major renovations to the campus infrastructure, to existing cottages to make them suitable for current program use, making facilities handicapped accessible and adding new playing fields completed the project. These renovations to our campus position Methodist Children's Home Society to serve children with special needs both today and for generations to come.
Financial support from individuals, churches, organizations, corporations and foundations as well as other donations sustain all programs.
Benefits
BENEFITS SUMMARY INFORMATION OFFERED TO FULL TIME METHODIST CHILDREN’S HOME EMPLOYEES
Health Care Insurance -- MCare
-- Individual Premium Co-pay=$7.44, Two Person or Family = $38.46 per pay
-- Effective on the 1st of the month following 90 days of employment
Dental Insurance
Approximately 50% coverage up to $1,000; may use any dentist.
Opt Out Program
If, as a full time employee, you elect to waive medical coverage and can prove you are insured under your spouse’s policy, you are paid $1000.00/yr. in quarterly installments.
Flexible Benefits (125 Cafeteria Plan)
Child Care Flex -- up to a maximum of $5,000.00
Health Care Flex -- up to a maximum of $1, 500.00
Requires responsibility on part of participant – use it or loose it.
aves approximately 30% since done pre-tax
403(b)7 Tax Deferred Savings Account
Qualify if you’re 21 and employed with MCHS for three months. Can have as little as 2% or maximum of 20% of income deferred
--Mutual funds administered by Fidelity, Vanguard and Mutual of America
Disability Insurance
--Effective after orientation period and after three months being off work
Life Insurance
--Minimum of $25,000 term (sliding scale contingent on wages)
Tuition Reimbursement
Repays 50% of direct costs (per credit hour) – i.e.: class cost only, not books, registration fees, etc. (not in effect until after orientation period). Must attain a grade of “C” or better to be reimbursed.
Defined Benefit Pension Plan
The Agency offers a retirement plan to all employees in accordance with the law. This includes an employer contribution plan which requires one year of eligibility and three years of vesting.
Holidays = 8 paid
(New Year’s Day; Martin Luther King Day, Good Friday OR Easter Sunday; Memorial Day; Independence Day; Labor Day; Thanksgiving Day; the Day After Thanksgiving; and Christmas Day) Select eight from the nine offered.
Vacation:
After six months, vacation shall accrue at the rate of 5/6 of a day per month, retroactive to the first day of employment.
10 days after first year (five days after six months)
11 days after two years
12 days after three years
13 days after four years
15 days after five years
18 days after seven years
20 days after ten years
Other Paid Time Off
Sick = 8 days
If off three days or more, must provide a medical doctor’s certificate of illness upon return to work. If frequent absences of less than three days, doctor’s certificate may be requested at supervisor’s discretion. Sick time may be accumulated and banked.
Personal = 5 days. At the end of the year, unused personal time is transferred into sick time bank.
No time off during the first six months. No paid benefit time during the first six months, then vacation, sick, personal accrues from date of hire. Holidays are paid AFTER thirty days of full time employment.