Gateway
Gateway is the oldest continuously operating social service agency in Birmingham. The agency provides services ranging from family counseling and therapeutic foster care to anger management classes and consumer credit counseling.
The agency began as The Mercy Home in 1891, founded by The Women’s Christian Temperance Union to provide basic social services to women and children. It was a charter member of the Community Chest, which became United Way of Central Alabama. The agency name was changed to Gateway in 1968, to Family and Child Services in 1977, then back to Gateway in 1999.
Currently, Gateway provides services in 10 program areas:
Community Connections - Focused on helping children grow up healthy, Community Connections goes into area schools, churches, and community centers with programs to help prevent tobacco, drug and alcohol addiction; to help children learn to handle problems without resorting to violence; and to help families communicate better.
Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) – In 2005, consumers in the United States carried more than $825 billion in revolving debt.[1] The personal bankruptcy rate rose nearly 350 percent from 1980 to 2004.[2] CCCS works with people facing financial difficulties to get out of debt, avoid bankruptcy and learn to manage their money.
Representative Payee Program – Some recipients of Social Security Administration (SSA) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits struggle to manage their finances sufficiently to ensure their basic needs are met. The RPP receives clients’ benefit checks on their behalf, and works with those clients to make sure funds are protected and are used to meet their needs.
Family Counseling Offices - Gateway provides specialized counseling services for children, adults, seniors, couples and others. The fee is on a sliding scale, based on client income.
Shelby County Wraparound Program - In many cases, families who are at risk of having children removed from the home can be held together safely through “wrapping” services around them. Families who are at risk are referred to Gateway by the Alabama Department of Human Resources, and social workers provide a wide range of services to help strengthen the families so they can remain together in a healthy way.
Gateway Violence Intervention Program (GVIP) – Reducing violence in the home and community is most effective when the people who are being violent learn other ways to express anger or frustration. GVIP provides group sessions to help domestic violence offenders accept responsibility for their behaviors, learning to communicate productively and without violence. Also offered are an anger management program addressing non-intimate partner aggression, and a theft intervention program helping offenders confront the impact and reasons behind their offenses.
Independent Living Program – In ILP, young people are provided an opportunity to move into an agency leased apartment with the support of staff available to them on a 24 hour emergency basis. They are expected to be employed or in school and to gradually assume full responsibility for their lives. Staff assists in skill development with clients in the following areas: managing budgets, seeking and holding jobs, establishing community support systems, continuing parental education and child development and becoming responsible members of their community.
Residential Program – Located on Gateway’s Airport Highway campus, the residential program offers youth with severe emotional and behavioral issues the intensive treatment they need in a safe and nurturing environment.
Rushton School – A fully accredited public school, Rushton provides education services for youth in the Residential program as well as some day treatment students.
Therapeutic Foster Care – Some children placed in foster care need counseling and other services beyond what is offered in traditional foster care. These children are placed with specially trained foster parents in Gateway’s Therapeutic Foster Care program, where they receive individualized services from the TFC staff.
1 Federal Reserve Statistical Release. January 8, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/ on February 2, 2007.
2 Garrett, T. and Ott, L. (2005) “Up, Up and Away: Personal Bankruptcies Soar!” The Regional Economist. October 2005. Retrieved from http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2005/d/pages/bankruptcy.html on February 2, 2007.