| story by | Maren Ludwig, O’Connell Children’s Shelter |
| photo by | Steven Hertzog |
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O’Connell Children’s Shelter is able to provide emergency care for community youth in need because of the help of its many generous volunteers.
NON PROFIT: O’Connell Children’s Shelter
At O’Connell Children’s Shelter, we have just finished the 38th annual Festival of Trees, where hundreds of community volunteers create and then donate trees, wreaths and other works of art to be auctioned off in support of our agency and those we serve. The Festival of Trees is such a special time for us because it brings our entire community together around the holidays for such an important cause.
Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart. 
–Elizabeth Andrew
O’Connell Children’s Shelter was formed in 2021 through a merger between two long-standing Lawrence nonprofit organizations: O’Connell Youth Ranch (established in 1976) and The Shelter Inc. (established 1981). Today, our services include those of both originating agencies and so much more. We provide emergency care for children in our community, usually involving serving a family in one of their most desperate times. It could include placing a youth who needs care when their family has been in an accident, keeping a child abuse victim safe while an investigation occurs or helping to intervene for a short-term stay when family tensions are high.
We also provide long-term and short-term care in our residential and foster homes for youth in the child-welfare system. These are usually youth who have had multiple placement disruptions, and we aim to stabilize their living situation and provide necessary support to prepare them for the future.
NON PROFIT: O’Connell Children’s Shelter
What you might not know, however, are the services we provide to children, youth and families to keep them together and strengthen the family unit. We believe healthy families make a healthy community and have made a significant investment in meeting families’ needs in our community in whatever way necessary.
- We can help determine Medicaid eligibility for families who meet income standards so they can access health insurance immediately.
- Knowing that successful school attendance and a high school diploma are critical to bright and prosperous futures for youth, we provide truancy case-management services to help youth stay in school and be successful.
- We also offer services where behavioral-health challenges result in young people engaging in criminal behavior, seeking to change their behavior and the pipeline from youth offender to adult offender, ultimately making our community safer.
We provide intensive in-home therapeutic and case-management services aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect, and to provide specific targeted help to families impacted by poverty, hoping to change the generational hold and effects it can have on families.
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We cannot do any of this vital work without our volunteers. You will find a number of volunteers supporting us on our Board of Directors. Most of our Board has served numerous terms, but none more than Wint Winter Jr. Winter just retired after serving 43 years on our Board. We have our master gardener, Susan Andersen, who joined us after her retirement. She now volunteers nearly full time, leading a team of our youth in our garden program, teaching them to grow healthy food and helping to create a sustainable future. We also have volunteer Susan Stuever, a retired nurse who comes every week to our homes to help us manage the multiple aspects of health care for the youth we serve. We have Cindy and Kevin Harmon, and Dan Koehn, who have organized the Summer’s End Cruise-In Car Show for the last seven years. They chose to give the money raised to support our prevention programs. Then there’s the Kaw Valley Quilters Guild, which ensures our youth feel loved and supported by creating a beautiful range of handmade quilts for them to select as a treasured keepsake. Finally, we have several folks who show up at the holidays to guarantee our youth feel loved—Garber Enterprises with their duffels of essentials, Lawrence Sunshine Foundation fulfilling wish list requests for the youth, Norine Spears leading a group of friends to create jacket packets (with gloves, hats, warm socks and candy) for each young person and The Eagles taking the youth holiday shopping each year. These are just a few of those who mean so much to our organization as they give of themselves year after year.
When a nonprofit has close to a 50-year history of serving its community, it is built on the good works of so many who have come before us and have shared their time and talents. As the holidays approach, we are so grateful to all those who give. As we look to the future and seek to expand on our services with a special focus on crisis services for youth, we will continue to need our community’s commitment. Our promise to you is to continue to be there for our community’s most at-risk children, youth and families.
