“Our neighborhood needs to take care of these kids,” said Father Wellems, who has helped hundreds of young people avoid gangs and tried to improve their family lives as the priest of Holy Cross-Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish and executive director of Boys Town Chicago, a local outpost of the nearly century-old organization dedicated to youth services.
The neighborhood has one of Chicago’s largest Latino communities, rooted in traditional Mexican values of church and family. But it is also plagued by poverty, and the pull of gangs, which offer the safety and structure that some families lack, is overwhelming.
Now Father Wellems has another way to address the problem. After years of work, including winning the support of Mayor Richard M. Daley and persuading the city to issue $2 million in bonds, Father Wellems plans to develop a cluster of five group homes intended to serve at-risk children and their parents in Back of the Yards.
With a residential layout and two live-in social workers as “parents,” each home will strive to mimic a nurturing family environment while striking a balance between education, observation and privacy.
“It gives every child a sense of pause and a way to reboot,” said Tim McCormick, who heads SOS Children’s Villages Illinois, which has two other clusters of group homes in the state. In April, SOS Villages signed on as the developer for the group homes in Back of the Yards.
The homes are part of a broader state and national effort to keep child welfare cases out of the courts by focusing on the early assessment of youths and strengthening families through counseling and outreach services.
In Illinois, a state initiative has moved children out of the family court system with adoptions, guardianships and family reunifications, in addition to reaching out to families before a domestic crisis occurs that could result in a formal investigation. The program has been remarkably successful. In 1997, more than 52,000 children were in state care. In 2011 the number is 15,625, according to a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
In managing a smaller child-welfare system, officials say, there is an opportunity to support ventures like Father Wellems’s that focus social services on each child and family and strengthen family dynamics.
Last June, Father Wellems approached Mr. Daley to ask for a small amount of land where he could build a long-term residential facility. To Father Wellems’s surprise and delight, Mr. Daley briskly circled two full blocks of city-owned land beginning at 50th and Throop Streets.
It has taken nearly a year to get this far, but if all goes as planned, Father Wellems said, he will consider the homes his lifetime achievement. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year.
“It’s like coming up to a base camp and it’s beautiful,” he said. “You can see the peaks and you have a vision of the mountain, but it still has to be climbed.”
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