For 40 years Christian City has amassed a rich history of providing care for children. Now poised to embark on its next four decades of service, the organization and the ministry stands at the threshold of providing those services in a way that may impact communities far beyond its campus in Union City. Joining the ministry to help meet those challenges is Special Assistant for Program Development Philip Kouns.

Kouns was co-founder and long-time Executive Director of Rainbow House in Clayton County, a center for children separated from their parents because of neglect or abuse. He served as Executive Director at the center for 18 years. Since 1988, Rainbow House has served 5,000 children from Clayton and other counties.

“Leaving Rainbow House was a monumental decision for me. And it was a painful decision, but not in respect to the excitement of the challenge here. I’ve known about Christian City my entire life. There is no other place I would have considered going” Kouns said.

Commenting on Kouns’ arrival at the ministry, President and CEO Robert Crutchfield said Kouns’ statewide reputation and his expertise will help carry the Christian City into the future.

“Phil brings to us years of high level engagement in the (Georgia service delivery) system and with the needs of children. He probably has as good or better grasp on the needs of children and how the system can serve them than anybody we could find. So we’re pleased that after he developed Rainbow House to a tremendous benefit for the community that he could now pull away from that and help us with bringing that expertise to the table,” Crutchfield said. “All the recognitions and the things Phil has been involved with are significant. The weight that Phil brings to us is remarkable. And as good as Rainbow House has been and all the good things he’s done, I think the best years of accomplishment are ahead of him.”

Kouns list of awards and recognitions is exhaustive. Among those, and perhaps the most significant, said Crutchfield, is the recent presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children. A former Child Protective Services Trainer and Senior Caseworker Supervisor, Georgia Dept. of Human Resources Special Agent with the Office of Child Support Recovery and co-founder and Executive Director of Rainbow House, Kouns has more than 26 years in Human Services and 10 years in ministry. He serves on the board of Georgia Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, is the recipient of Southeastern Network of Youth and Family Services Gail Kurtz Award and has held numerous board positions and been the recipient of many awards over the past two decades.

Yet for Kouns, it’s all about the future. And obvious in his voice, the future is all about Christian City and its service to children.

“My first primary responsibility is to look at the Children’s Division and the new campus for the Children’s Village, Kouns said. “Christian City has a long history, beginning in 1965 with the first cottage for boys and then a home for children. As the service has progressed, as the need has increased and as the buildings have aged, there is a need for a new start, a fresh start. We want to strengthen a program that has already been successful for many years. And we’re looking at the climate and culture today with DHR (Georgia Dept. of Human Resources) in the placement of children. It’s next to impossible to get a hold on what that direction will be. But the thing that doesn’t change for us is our ministry and our mission.”

“And in the middle of some heavy, heavy challenges statewide, what we’ve got to offer here is among the most unique of any agency in this state,” Kouns continued with a smile. “Because not only are we looking at expanding our continuum and having this full array of services on-site, but what we’re all about, the philosophy of caring and ministering to these children and their families, is really not matched by too many other folks in the state. It’s not just about changing children’s lives, it’s about creating and molding the future culture here, a culture that will continue to expand. And that’s so exciting. We’ve got to satisfy what the state is looking for and remain true to who we are, and yet provide for more children than we are not serving.”

Crutchfield said an alternative to the traditional approach used by Christian City and other service providers in Georgia might be complimented by placing some children in their own home with foster parents and with no semblance of an institutional environment. Historically in the United States, that view of service delivery is one of the outcomes of a movement that began in Europe as a method of serving people with development disabilities. The communitization model, sometimes called normalization or the community-based model, holds that individuals will have a greater overall chance at a more meaningful and productive life if their home environment closely mirrors that of most citizens in the society in which they live.

“We do this now on a very limited basis,” Crutchfield said. “But what Phil has come here to do is to look at the total spectrum of needs in the children’s area, from crisis intervention to assessment to placement as quickly as possible in an environment where they can flourish.”

And within that operational and philosophical view, Crutchfield and Kouns said the potentially changing climate of service provision in Georgia may well find Christian City providing increasing numbers of services to children in off-campus settings.

“That’s the big shift that we are making,” Crutchfield said. “One of Phil’s first tasks will be to form a program that will define the training and development needs for new foster parents. We intend to go into the community and recruit potential foster parents, train them here, develop a support system and a follow-up system for them so that when they receive children into their care they will be fully prepared and supported. So we’ll work hand and glove with the state system.”

“When we started this commitment it involved taking the children who were in our current environment, which has now been surrounded by a senior’s community, and giving them their own place. We now have under construction an entirely new Children’s Village,” Crutchfield continued. “In concert with that, we’ll be looking at the therapeutic needs and the continuum of care that needs to be developed for our future construction on the Children’s Village, and then developing this huge capacity to place children into the community in private foster homes with foster parents who have been trained here, who have been inculcated with our core values. It’s not just going to be a job. It’s going to be a calling for these folks. So we should be caring for many times the number of children we are now, just not necessarily on campus.”

For Crutchfield and Kouns, this evolving approach to providing service to larger numbers of children is one that Christian City is poised to undertake. It is one that will include the ministry’s llong-standingperspective on what makes the difference in the life of a child. As with the many services provided by Christian City, purpose and presence meld into one far-reaching reality. The reality is that of multiple ministries driven by one mission.

“We feel like we’ve got a great opportunity here to be self-contained and provide a continuum of care right here at Christian City without having to go outside this agency and outside of our purpose,” Kouns explained. “As the state moves toward privatization, our goal is not to be a recruitment agency for the state, but to create folks who have a great passion and a ministry, a service-oriented aspect to their lives to care for the children that we are going to serve.”

At the center of it all, at the point of origin for any form of service provided, are the ones for whom the service is intended. In an often disaffected and distracted world, the primary focus of responsibility of providing services to children lies not in the funding dollars or in the regulations that accompany them. The primary focus lies much deeper, on a level that can only be experienced as a person uses their heart as a lens. From that unique perspective, one that can only come from love, the caregiver stands as witness and participant, willing to see the dreams and the fears that exist in a child’s life. It is a vision impossible to miss in a child’s eyes.

“In their eyes I truly see a cry for hope. That’s the one thing that I have seen missing and yearned for in the life of nearly every single child and their families,” Kouns remarked. “Can you imagine getting up every day and not having any idea what’s going to happen in your life that day? Not to know if you have any hope for any people who care about you, hope for a future, hope for some success in your life, hope that you’re not going to be abused or abandoned. Can you imagine living every day like that? You’ve got to be committed to bringing people hope, to ministering to them. You’ve got to. I can’t think of any better way to sum it up.”

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