The community organization Club Blue presented grants to its 2018 chosen charity recipients- Rosecrance and Casa, last Wednesday at the Community Foundation of Northern Illinois. In sponsorship with Illinois Bank and Trust, Club Blue provided Rosecrance with a generous $100,000 check to launch its ‘Power of Play’ program.
With the funds from Club Blue, Rosecrance will be able to transform existing spaces at the Berry Campus into a play therapy room and a sensory room. The play therapy room will provide kids access to non-verbal play stations, games, items engaging tactile and auditory senses, a dollhouse and art supplies. The sensory room will be a soothing, safe space that fosters calm and well-being, including special lighting, swings, sound machines, therapy balls and aromatherapy.
In addition, portable expressive therapy kits will be created for clinicians to use in the community. The Rosecrance Berry Campus receives approximately 2,000 crisis calls annually, and clinicians often go to the kids.
“The grant will fundamentally transform how we can work with children and adolescents,” says Steve Smith, Rosecrance Administrator of Child and Adolescent Services. “Play and sensory therapy will allow us to more effectively engage clients, help reduce or prevent crises from occurring, and provide a near limitless range of tools to help children and adolescents more effectively express how they are truly feeling.”
In 2017, the Rosecrance Berry Campus served nearly 4,500 children and the grant will allow Rosecrance and its clinicians to serve even more disadvantaged kids throughout the community.
Club Blue began in 2011 by ten women who gathered together and were shocked to learn about the magnitude of child abuse in the Rockford community. The women decided to take action and eighty-two days later the first Club Blue event was held. The Club Blue committee is now 32 women strong and has raised over $1,500,000 to support children in need in our community.