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the Up center – Calming the Storm
Support, stability and peace are common threads woven through the
Up Center’s programs and services, offering a lifeline to
people in need from infants to seniors.
For 125 years the Up Center, formerly Child & Family Services
of Eastern Virginia, has provided family and parent edu-cation,
foster care and adoption services, violence prevention counseling,
financial and housing counseling and services for seniors, youth,
veterans and people with disabilities.
With offices in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Franklin, the Up
Center helps clients – up to 10,000 a year – live fuller,
better lives.
David and Helen Lindsay found the help they desperately needed through
an Up Center program funded by the Obici Healthcare Foundation.
The retired Smithfield couple thought they were done parenting when
their five children and numerous foster children all left home.
Then they gained custody of their two granddaughters, now 7
and 9 years old, when the parents were unable to care for them.
“The girls had been moved from pillar to post – they’d
had a helluva life before they came to us,” David Lindsay
said.
Confronted by the girls’ destructive, angry behavior, the
Lindsays felt helpless
and unable to cope. Agency after agency turned down the couple’s
pleas for help.
Then, two years ago, they found the Up Center and clinician Shawn
Ware-Avant.
“I was impressed by how fast
she got to know them and got into their heads,” David Lindsay
said. “After three months of weekly sessions we saw a gradual
but noticeable improvement, the girls had stability and peace.”
The family still has some challenges, he admits, even with what
he calls “outstanding advice” from Ware-Avant in working
with the girls.
“They’re kids after all,” David said. “But
they’ve improved so much.”
And now the Lindsays know where to reach for a lifeline when they
need it.
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