Italian Home for Children provides an integrated network of powerful and effective programs to help children and families with emotional, behavioral, and educational challenges thrive in their communities.

This message takes on a special meaning to me because it’s my first chance to articulate a vision for the future of Italian Home for Children. Inspired by our storied history of providing help to the most vulnerable, our truly wonderful staff, and an incredibly dedicated base of volunteer and professional leadership, we will continue to empower the children and families we serve. For close to 100 years Italian Home for Children has rallied around a powerful mission of providing the best and most meaningful care to children, adults, and families of all backgrounds. More recently we’ve harnessed that experience and the competencies we’ve developed in order to expand our service mix and geography. For example, in the past five years we’ve started offering cutting edge outreach services in a growing number of communities. With a new leadership team it is now a perfect time to pause and ask some questions of our stakeholders so that we can meet the central mission. If we served you, how could we have provided even more help? If you are plugged in to your community, where are there unmet needs? If you work for us, how can we become the employer of choice in our field? If you’ve donated time, energy, or a financial contribution, did we exceed your expectations? In my short time I can already relate examples of how we can actualize this process. For example, when a close and well-connected colleague found out I was coming to IHC she told me that more in-home services were needed for children with Autism. Hearing this, I tuned in to some parent groups in our service area and found out that there were, in fact, long waiting lists as providers struggled to serve everyone who needed help. Now we are asking our current staff how we could become the employer of choice in order to attract well trained staff who would deliver these services. We are also building a strong state of the art development department so that we can earn the capital needed for the startup of new and exciting programs like this. Over the course of the next year we will be excited to share our progress toward opening up this new service line! As we close in on 100 years we will continue our long tradition of providing the highest quality programs rooted in deeply held core values. To that end I’m hoping that each person reading this can help us by answering one of the above questions. We truly need your help so that we can serve even more children in significant ways in the years to come.

Alan Jacobson

Chief Executive Officer

If you know me, you are aware that I am a numbers person. In my career as an accountant and a banker, I look at things from an analytical perspective every day. Before I became the Board Chair last year, I was charged with heading the Finance Committee. Over the last couple of years, we have substantially improved our financial position. You can see that in the financial and program numbers in the pages of this annual report. I am very pleased with the steady progress that we are making on this front, and our intention is that it will only get better. Even though I am definitely a numbers person, I also have an appreciation for the quality of the hardworking staff and diverse programs at Italian Home. While attending this summer’s SunsSplash, I saw many happy children, dedicated employees, and amazing volunteers. It was an example of us at our best and what we can accomplish when we pool our resources. It is my hope that all of our efforts will culminate in healthier children and stronger families. Those smiles and relationships are sometimes hard to report on, but they are the numbers that we should be the most proud of!

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