thought instead of young people helping the seniors, we’ll put seniors in there for reduced rent, and they’ll help the children and families,” Eheart says. The arrangement has worked well, she says, and researchers from around the nation visit Hope Meadows regularly hoping to replicate their successful results elsewhere.
Currently, 30 adopted kids in 10 families live among almost 50 senior volunteers at Hope, sharing birthdays, activities, work and struggles. On one recent day at the neighborhood’s Intergenerational Community Center, a group of young children and seniors laughed and joked while playing a life-sized game of Chutes and Ladders.
“My husband calls it his ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood,” says adoptive parent and Hope resident Debbie Calhoun, referring to the near-perfect world portrayed in the popular 1950s sitcom. Everyone at Hope knows everyone else, Calhoun says, and everyone gets along well most of the time. She and her husband, Kenny, were the first people to move to Hope Meadows when it was formed in 1994, and they have adopted eight children as their own, in addition to their biological daughter, Shana. One of the Calhouns’ adopted sons, James, was labeled a “failure to thrive” when they adopted him at age 4, Debbie Calhoun says. James is now 20, married, going to college and has four jobs.
“All the sleepless nights just go away when you see them succeed,” she says proudly, adding that the support they receive from the community makes parenthood much easier.
“Being out here, with the seniors and staff involved, we’ve got constant support,” Calhoun says. “They’ve raised their own kids and give us some hindsight about what might work. The support makes a lot of difference in the closeness out here, because everyone is looking at what’s good for the children, and it’s not just us by ourselves.”
The children adopted at Hope often come from situations of sexual abuse, neglect or overwhelmed parents, Calhoun says, and they often have issues with trust and abandonment. At Hope, those children find a permanent place to unpack their bags, literally and figuratively.
“So often, kids in the foster care system will get bounced around to family after family,” she says. “They never get a chance to rest and let go of their fear and hurt.”
Being a permanent home is an important part of the ICI model, says Hope’s executive director and CEO, Elaine Gehrmann. Hope used to accept foster kids, Gehrmann says, but the bonds that were broken when those children eventually left were too hard on everyone involved, so the program now focuses solely on adoption.
“It was like they were losing not only the attachment to the foster parents, but an attachment to the entire community,” Gehrmann says. “Childhood is all about forming attachments. That’s how we evolve, and if that’s disrupted when you’re young, it makes it harder to do it again and again. It’s harder to trust and believe that this is really going to be your new family, your new home.”
For adopted children, the community provides a safe and stable place to grow. Sixteenyear-old Grant Morrow, originally from Chicago, was adopted by a Hope family at age seven, and he says he has learned a lot from living there for nine years.
“They’ve helped me learn what’s important,” Morrow says. “I’ve definitely learned about maturity.”
Morrow already has plans to start a clothing business when he grows up, as well as a store to rent movies,
games and musical instruments. He says a senior volunteer named Joan has
supported his growth and helped him through some tough times.
"My husband calls it his ‘Leave it to Beaver’ neighborhood. "
“She took care of me when I didn’t have anybody else to talk to,” Morrow says. “I like it here because people are there for you.”
The community’s senior volunteers benefit from the program as well, and not just in the form of reduced rent. Gehrmann says seniors at Hope generally feel a sense of continued purpose because of the impact they can have on young lives, and the relationships they build provide meaningful interaction. As sen-
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