The Children's Home of Reading

Don't send your kids here. Terribly understaffed. There is no air conditioning in the boys' unit. Staff will restrain and leave cuts and burns and abrasions on the children. I could go on for hours about this place. Please do Not send your children here. Find another option!

There are some good direct care employees there however the children don’t appear to be the priority, money is. Staff is underpaid and there are consistently too few to keep them and the kids safe, the food provided for the kids is literally cheap junk, upper management consistently lies and mainly worries about liability and their bottom line. Caseworkers, clinicians, all direct care staff, even housekeeping who laughably doubles as “security” are underpaid and falsely appreciated when they’re handed $20 food vouchers for Christmas for enduring some difficult situations that’s exacerbated by the continual lack of support. It’s not a good work environment. Turnover is high and morale is typically low. It may seem crazy but it really appears to be all about the insurance money the kids bring for those who run it. Why else would they add an entirely new unit when there isn’t sufficient staff to begin with? Non profit? Yeah, ok. Perhaps the owner is enriching his life on the equity of the real estate the facilities are operated in as he’s riding around in luxury vehicles while his full time employees who actually work with the troubled youth easily qualify for government assistance. Too much reliance on drugs to manage behaviors when things get bad, some kids have been zombified with medication in the past, bringing about a host of sad side effects. The occasional true success story is a result of certain caring employees and individuals/organizations who donate, not upper management.

I went there in 2020 love most of the staff but they did not get paid enough when we got granted our home passes we had to go to the empty floor because of Covid when we where up there we found countless dirty rags and one day we found like 5 toothbrushes with poop on them from the boys unit and at that time a lot of staff where leaving because of pay cuts but other then that this place has put a big impact in my life with boundaries and self respect I want to thank all my staff that could talk to (at this time I was going by Conner) I hope this place got more staff and fixed the church and got better cleaning staff

The year 1992 I was in this home. And I remember a great man and mentor we called him pops. He help me along my way of life. I stayed here for a few months. I see the building was changed and updated. But I hope people there are just like Pops was