Blessing House hosts luncheon to honor those helping children

When children need help, they want a hero. Fortunately, Blessing House — a place rooted in the very idea of helping children — knows where to find them. This week Blessing House, the county's only children's crisis care center, will honor 21 "Heroes In the Eyes of a Child" at a special luncheon Thursday. It's the fourth year the organization has held the event, timed in honor of National Child Abuse Prevention Month. It also coincides with the 20th anniversary of Blessing House's founding. Since opening its doors on April 6, 2005, more than 1,900 children have found shelter at the home. Here are a few of those to be honored: Judith Padua Like most heroes, Judith Padua wouldn't describe herself that way. A mother and grandmother of three, she came to Lorain from Puerto Rico in the early 1990s and started her career working with at-risk youth in the Lorain County Juvenile Court, then with psychiatric interventions at Applewood Centers before going back to school to finish her master's degree in social work. By 2013, she found herself at the Lorain County Children's Services, where she eventually became the foster care recruitment coordinator two years ago. "I feel like God brought me here. I feel like it's my mission to find homes for children who come to our attention," Padua said. Padua said her focus is on increasing the number of foster homes in Lorain County. Currently, there are 68 families licenses — and last year, 325 children in the county were separated from their families. The kinship program, in which relatives that are able to pass state requirements to take in the children, allowed 140 to stay with family. "But what happened when they don't stay in our county because not only are they separated from family, they're separated from their community as well. This is really important and this is why I love my job," she said. "I will talk to churches, I will show up at board meetings, at township meetings, at any congregation of people to talk about becoming foster parents." Jenna McGee-McManamon Jenna McGee-McManamon was nominated for her work leading the Lorain Early Learning Initiative, a kindergarten readiness program that reaches nearly 400 preschool children each year through her job as the director of curriculum with the Lorain Historical Society. "That's a big word, isn't it? 'Hero'? I was like wow. Obviously, coming from an organization that's heroic like Blessing House, it was just — wow," she said. "What's very interesting and special to me is we're all likeminded individuals, we all share the same kind of passion and commitment to supporting and uplifting children as a common goal. Especially the kids who need it the most." A mom herself, she credits time spent learning in Italy as pivotal in her perspective to education and the holistic way of looking at children. "In Italy, in European culture, the child is the child of the community. It changed the way I approach children and education and child development." The initiative program incorporates hands-on learning through museum trips for preschoolers and dovetails with evidence-based learning to get them ready for kindergarten, she said. The roots of the program started as the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., before moving to Cleveland, and then to Lorain. "The historical society knows children are our future adults and community members and they are going to be the ones to be the change makers, the ones making the decisions, and it's been a pleasure working with them," she said. Jennifer Dodge Children deserve quality child care, and Dodge has spent her career arranging and securing those resources. She worked in corporate child care programs following college, including directing an on-site child care program at the world headquarters of Domino's Pizza in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In Lorain County, she founded the Linden School, an intergenerational child care program on the campus of Wesleyan Village in Elyria, creating unique connections between young children and senior adults. That led to a position as the executive director of the Child Care Resource Center, which she still holds today. The center serves Erie, Lorain, Huron, Sandusky and Seneca counties, serving adults that work with young children and advocating for children. Dodge said her agency is best known for helping families to find child care through use of an intensive intake process and an extensive network that helps them find the resources that best fits each family's needs. "The ironic piece is, I knew Sister Mary (Bernigan, one of the founders of Blessing House) before she even opened Blessing House," Dodge said. "I and some others in the community, we were the ones to advocate for Sister Mary to get their licensing to open. Before she opened, there was no licensing in the state for critical nurseries in the state. She advocated for that so she could do what she is doing now. It's so great to see how far things have come since then." Contact Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.