Little Rock’s Youth Home is marking 60 years of serving youth and families with complex mental and behavioral health needs. Here’s what six decades of that work has taught them and what they’re doing to celebrate it.
1. Healing doesn’t always look like people think. Forty-two acres of peaceful, tree-lined grounds offer shade and structure for residents of its seven houses, with shared spaces full of warmth and natural light. Youth Home’s campus is part summer camp, part haven, designed deliberately to feel like a home rather than a hospital. For many children who arrive there, that distinction changes everything.
2. Legacy is built on the families saved and hope found. Since its founding in 1966, Youth Home carries a legacy that few organizations in behavioral health can match. CEO Peggy Kelly has seen that legacy up close.
“First, I saw the impact of our program on families over a decade as chief clinical officer,” she says. “Now, as CEO, I see it from a different perspective, and the need is imperative.”
For Kelly, the organization’s longevity isn’t just a milestone. It’s a reflection of what becomes possible when an organization refuses to look away from children most in need.
3. Complex children deserve committed, compassionate care. Youth Home is sought out nationally as a residential treatment center for youth with complex attachment disruptions including reactive attachment disorder, conditions rooted in early trauma that reshape the way a child relates to the world. Treatment requires consistency, safety and trust, built slowly, over time.
4. Healing happens in relationships. Children in foster care and military-connected youth often share a common thread: disrupted relationships from the very beginning. Youth Home’s two Colonel Glenn programs provide the structure and stability that allow healing to begin and the consistent, trusted adults who make it possible.
5. Doing things the right way costs more. Youth Home does it anyway. Premium care isn’t cheap, and Youth Home has never pretended otherwise. As a private, not-for-profit organization, the commitment has always been to care, not cost. That commitment is reflected in an award-winning culinary program rooted in food as medicine, an accredited school with certified special education teachers and behavioral health providers in every classroom and an award-winning recreational therapy department.
6. Silence is the enemy. Speaking about mental health remains, for many individuals and families, anything but easy. This Mental Health Awareness Month, Youth Home’s new signature event, SpeakEasy, hopes to change that. The event takes place May 2 at the Eastside Scrapyard in Little Rock. Sixty years of work has taught Youth Home that healing a child requires more than a clinical team. It requires a community willing to have the hard conversation.
“This month gives us a chance to elevate those everyday realities and connect them with people who can really help us create change and stabilize our future,” Kelly says.
For more information on SpeakEasy and Youth Home’s resources, visit youthhome.org.
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