In this year alone, over 20,000 neglected children will be helped by Community Partners of Dallas (CPD).
CPD was founded in 1989 to help abused and neglected children when they most need assistance, from fulfilling material needs like supplying a school backpack to supporting case workers in their work.
“Our mission is to provide what abused and neglected children urgently need today so they can thrive tomorrow,” CPD Vice President of Operations Jennifer Doggett, said. “We provide for their urgent and immediate needs.”
A substantial part of CPD’s mission is to provide children with the supplies they need to thrive, which due to circumstances like abuse or neglect, may be difficult to obtain.
“We work alongside the caseworkers that are working with the children to provide the clothing, shoes, hygiene items, school supplies, toys, beds,” Doggett said. “Just really anything that those children need for the home that they are going to continue to live in or going to move into, make sure that they have what they need to provide that safe environment for the kiddo.”
Many of these supplies are distributed through the “Rainbow Room,” a store-like room where case workers can gather supplies for their children free of charge. Many of the items in the room come from community donations.
“It’s all brand new, so no child is getting anything used, which I think is really amazing,” life-long volunteer junior Mimi Tafel, said.
In addition to supplying items through their Rainbow Room, CPD also holds many annual drives, designed to supply children with the items they need at each specific time of year, like warm coats in the winter months. Having just finished its coat drive, CPD will now hold its annual Holiday Toy Drive, where the specific wishes of thousands of children are fulfilled.
” We have a very large holiday toy drive, and we will fill specific wishes for about 4,500 kiddos in Dallas County,” Doggett said. “We have amazing donors that will go and shop for and order exactly what that child is wishing for.”
Providing children accustomed to neglect or abandonment with their specific wish is a way that CPD shows individual children love and care.
“So many of the kids that we serve, like all kids, are wishing for a specific Barbie or a specific set of Legos. And because of circumstances outside of their control, they’ve never had those wishes filled, Doggett said. “If we can meet not just the Legos, but the Star Wars Legos, it just plants a seed of hope and of care in that child’s heart so that they know that wishes can come true. “
CPD not only supplies material support, but also supports and partners directly with case workers to ensure they are best able to do their jobs.
“Community Partners helps the caseworkers as well. So they’re really focused on not only the foster kids and the kids that are endangered but also the caseworkers,” Tafel said.
This includes providing plenty of coffee and food, including cookies donated in cookies for caseworkers program and even office space in their new headquarters. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many Dallas caseworkers have not had an actual office space from which to work, leading to the construction of caseworker specific offices on CPD premises.
” The foster care system doesn’t have much funding, and the caseworkers don’t really have many resources, so [CPD] provides a lot of resources for caseworkers themselves, too,” frequent volunteer junior Hannah Birdwell said.
In addition to the work of case workers and CPS employees, volunteers provide an incredible labor force for CPD, who donate stock the Rainbow Room, work drives and much more. This includes a collection of teens on the CPD teen board, called Teens Helping Abused and Neglected Kids, or THANK.
” I started my freshman year on their teen board, I’m currently the treasurer,” Birdwell said. “They meet on the first Monday of the month and we typically do some sort of service project, a lot of times, we will have some sort of speaker like, that might be a caseworker. It might be someone who’s been through the foster care system, or might be someone who works with CPD.”
By supporting children when they most need help, the people at CPD home to leave a loving and long-lasting impact on the kids they encounter, and improve their lives in both the short and long run.
“We take very, very seriously the impression that we want [children] to have of their caseworker, of how a community can take care of one another so that they know they are loved and cared about,” Dogget said. “They can take that with them throughout their life.”
