Every child needs to know that someone, somewhere in the world, is absolutely crazy about them. Yet this is not the experience for most of the kids coming to St. John’s Home. They often feel unlovable. Their greatest need is to experience healthy, close, and loving relationships.

Our first priority at St. John’s Home is to love kids. This means putting our kids’ needs before our own.

When kids feel loved, their behavior improves, not out of fear of punishment or to receive rewards, but out of a desire to connect with those who love them unconditionally.

Children who have been abused and neglected often believe that they are losers. Their poor self-esteem usually results in failures in school and elsewhere. We know that half of all teens with emotional and behavioral problems drop out of school.

When kids come to St. John’s Home we offer them extra help to discover their strengths. We challenge them, teach them new skills, and offer them new ways to experience success.

And, to show them how much we believe in them, we guarantee each residential graduate a free college education whenever they are ready.

Painful childhood experiences have a profound effect on who kids will become.

At St. John’s Home, we believe that the best therapy for early trauma is to temper it with positive and successful life experiences.

This includes offering our kids a wide variety of new opportunities, like camping, music lessons, canoe trips, and trust-building relationships with our counselors and therapists.

Kids who have been abused and neglected see the world as a hostile place where parents hurt their children. As a result, they often become unloving and distrustful.

At St. John’s Home, we believe that it is better to change kids’ negative perceptions than to coerce them into compliant behavior. When kids see themselves and the world more positively, their behavior improves.

Kids don’t change just because we tell them they are lovable and that the world is a good place, they learn this is true when we surround them with love, expect them to achieve great things, and offer new experiences that transform their view of the world.