Miss Devereux believed that every child is a program. In the summer of 1912, Miss Devereux moved a few children who had been unsuccessful in a traditional school setting into her parents’ home to provide individualized educational programs that capitalized on their strengths – not their weaknesses.From that simple beginning, ninety-four years ago, Devereux has grown into the largest, most diversified, not-for-profit provider of behavioral health care services in the country.The diversity of Devereux’s services was made apparent to me, once again, when I visited one of our newest programs, the Esperanza program in Phoenix, Arizona.

Devereux’s Esperanza provides services for unaccompanied alien children. This program provides a safe, structured, nurturing, and therapeutic environment to children who have been detained for entering the country illegally by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement.While a child is in Esperanza, Devereux assists either in locating a responsible relative in the United States or initiating a request for asylum based on unstable conditions in the child’s homeland.Since Mexican children are not eligible for the program, children in Devereux’s Esperanza hail from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and further. One child had found her way from Iraq, illegally crossed the border from Mexico, and began her search for a relative living in the United States.How fortunate for her that caring individuals with Devereux could fold her into their caring community at Esperanza.

As many as twenty-three children live in the two group homes of Esperanza. I was immediately struck by how clean and tidy the two houses were. The children themselves do all of the housekeeping. Eager to learn new skills and proud of their new surroundings, they do an excellent job. Although they all have endured significant hardship and are very poorly educated, the children seem to understand the opportunities available to them in the United States. These children look forward to working hard to make a new life for themselves and to sending money back to their families.

Equally amazing to me was the staff - caring, gentle, supportive, and very proud of the work they are doing. All of the staff members are bilingual, critical to working with children who speak little or no English when they arrive at Esperanza. Drawn to the sense of community in the Esperanza program, several of the present staff had migrated to Devereux from other agencies that participated in similar programs of transition for children so far from family and home.

Given the daily heart-breaking news of the war in the Middle East, complete with pictures of displaced families in war-ravaged neighborhoods, visiting Devereux’s Esperanza program made my day.