CARTERVILLE (WSIL) -- The Poshard Foundation for Abused Children held a check presentation on the John A. Logan College campus Friday afternoon as it distributed $100,000 through a grant from the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund.
Eighteen agencies from across southern Illinois received a share of the grant, which they say will reach individuals, children and those families hit hardest by the pandemic.
"When I first started our numbers were around 200, and they've definitely doubled in the last couple of years." Caritas interim associate director Jessica Hutton explains, adding that this increase in case loads creates a constant need of more people and more resources.
"We have a lot of kids in foster care and during this time I think it's even more important to be vigilant about what the needs are," Hutton says. "Because, people are staying at home and not getting out as often so, we're doing our best to make sure that they are checked in with regularly and making sure they have all the resources they need to thrive right now."
with a half-a-dozen locations serving more than 40 counties south of Effingham. They say the grant funding through the Poshard Foundation greatly helps their programs. Both their Carterville and Mt. Vernon locations shared in grant.
Today's recipients included:
- Attucks Community Service Board
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Illinois
- Cairo Women’s Shelter, Inc.
- Carbondale Spring Food Autonomy Project
- Carbondale Warming Center
- Caritas Family Solutions � Carterville
- Caritas Family Solutions � Mt. Vernon
- CASA of Jefferson County
- Centerstone
- Children’s Medical and Mental Health Resource Network
- Egyptian Health Department & System Partners
- Hoyleton Youth & Family Services
- Lutheran Social Services of Illinois Prison & Family Ministry
- Pregnancy Matters
- Southern Seven Health Department
- Spero Family Services
- Stress & Trauma Treatment Center & System Partners
- Women for Change
This is expected to be the last of the COVID-19 Response funding available for the Poshard Foundation. It provided $300,000 in Funding to the Poshard Foundation in April, and with an additional $100,000 in donations to the foundation, .
The Foundation says they will continue pursuing other means of extra funding to supplement what those grants provided.
"The need never ends," says Poshard Foundation Director Jo Poshard. "What we have and what we distributed can only touch a little bit of the need, and we recognize that."
Poshard says their efforts may only make a small dent in the need, but that dent means food, shelter, counseling, school supplies and a number of items that are "huge in the life of a child."
"We know that the need will continue, and we will try to keep doing what we can to get additional funding and to help," she says adding that people in southern Illinois want to help.
The Poshards together say, the need is always greater than the resources, and Glenn Poshard adds, especially when it involves children, "Particularly with the abused, neglected and abandoned children and their families, but we have to try."
