The Children’s Home seeks a President/CEO with a proven record of leadership, vision and management expertise to guide a staff of more than two hundred dedicated individuals.
The Children’s Home is a private, nonprofit agency of Covenant Ministries of Benevolence of the Evangelical Covenant Church. We have been providing services to children and families dating back to 1900 when we were founded as a safe haven for Swedish orphans.
Our services include a residential treatment center, a multi-program school, three group homes (located off-campus in Middletown, North Haven and Cromwell), an extended day treatment program, and other community services, including a family treatment center and a training academy.
In consultation with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) for the State of Connecticut, we see our present challenge in this way: to provide a highly effective and therapeutic experience for male and female adolescents who come to us from very diverse backgrounds, and frequently with acute behavioral and psychiatric problems.
In extensive consultation with the staff, the search committee appointed by the board of directors has identified the following key characteristics as essential for the next leader (they are listed in no particular order – we need them all):
• The President/CEO needs to be a visionary and a flexible leader. As the DCF and the State Department of Education constantly adapt their strategies to deal with the ever-changing needs of the children we are called to serve, our leader needs to anticipate these new challenges, design programmatic responses to them, and implement those responses in a way that is ever conscious of the simple fact of life – there are still more changes coming.
• The President/CEO needs to be a masterful communicator. She or he not only needs skills in interpersonal communication, but also needs to develop systems of communication with all of our many constituencies – state and local political leaders, Covenant Ministries of Benevolence, the Evangelical Covenant Church, our generous benefactors and prospective benefactors, our sister agencies that provide similar services to children, the board of directors, and by far the most important, with our staff and our children. We are led to believe that the most important specific communication skill is the ability to listen deeply.
• The President/CEO needs to be a skilled administrator. This is a complex organization. The finances are multifaceted. The physical plant requires constant attention, in part because the ever-changing needs of the children we serve demand ever-changing facilities.
• The staff continues to expand. Our leader needs to be able to hold people accountable, but even more important, she or he needs to build respectful, rich relationships with all members of our community, from persons who have worked for the Children’s Home for decades to the newest arrivals.
• The President/CEO needs to be a person of character and integrity. This quality is certainly self-evident. When the search committee talked with the staff, we heard them talking about “a positive presence” – humble, compassionate, forthright, honest, “servant leader.”
We are looking for a person who has a master’s degree in business or human services administration with an emphasis on clinical treatment of children and families and supervisory experience. Knowledge of state and federal policies and procedures regarding licensing and accreditation and a willingness to support the mission of The Home and the Evangelical Covenant Church would be helpful.
In case you are not familiar with our location, let us tell you a little about it. Our main campus is nestled in a park-like setting in Cromwell, Connecticut, a small New England town in close proximity to major universities, colleges, and historic and residential facilities. New York City and Boston are two hours away. New Haven to the south, and Hartford to the north, are less than a half-hour distant.
The Children’s Home is an equal opportunity employer.
