Our Crisis Care Center is a unique, family-style home that receives children for short periods of time until child services can relocate them to a safe environment. With our Honduran staff, psychologists, and leadership team, we strive to help each child within their cultural environment to rely on their communities and safe adults in order to achieve their full potential.

The typical crisis care case is related to abuse, neglect, or immigration and lasts a couple of days to a couple of weeks. However, there are always children with specific needs that are best met in a more specialized environment. In addition to our Crisis Care Center, we also have a home that focuses on these special cases under our crisis care program, the Transition House. The Transition House is a home for children with special cases waiting on foster and adoptive families, or a permanent home to become available. Special cases can include, sibling groups, teenage mothers, severe malnourishment, special needs, newborns, and longer term placements.

Legacy of Hope is one of the only crisis care centers that are equipped with this type of home and currently the only resource in this region of the country providing transitional care. Our children will remain with us until there is no longer a need, or until a more permanent home is identified. That could be a few weeks, months, and possibly even a few years.

“I am a 9 year old boy who was attacked by a drunk family member late at night with a machete. I have 11 stitches on my arm and it is red and swollen. Sometimes I sniff glue to make the hunger pains and worries go away, but today there is no way to dull the physical and emotional pain I bear. I am the man of the house, and I am afraid they will not let me go back to my mother and siblings. I worry what will happen to them without me.

I am a 16 year old girl who was raped on my way to the market. I left my small village in the mountains to deliver my baby in the public hospital 3 hours away. I spent the last 24 hours alone in that hospital. I am struggling to make enough milk to feed my baby, but I will not abandon her. I am full of fear and uncertainty as I wait for social services to locate a family member willing to take me in.

I am a 7 year old boy who was caught alone at the Guatemalan border. When the gangs moved into my village it became violent and dangerous. My mother left our village with the hope of making a better life in the United States. She worked 3 years as a migrant worker picking vegetables to fulfill her promise to bring me to her. She paid my guide $2000 to smuggle me across the border. He was abusive and forced me to walk day and night without food or water. He abandoned me when the authorities began to pursue us, and I was too slow and weak to keep up. I don’t know if I will ever see my mother again.”

– Children of the Crisis Care Center