Alternative House - the Abused and Homeless Children's Refuge mission is to transform the lives of children and youth helping them stay safe, make positive decisions, achieve educational success, and overcome personal crises.  We offer children, youth and families hope for brighter futures by providing counseling, shelter, neighborhood support and after-school programs.

For more than 40 years Alternative House has provided programs and services to meet that goal.   We began as a small shelter to help runaway and homeless youth and have grown to a multifaceted family services agency.

Alternative House's programs come at NO COST to young people and their families. Our programs include:

Our Emergency Shelter for Teenagers serves approximately 200 homeless, runaway and abused youth each year.   Young people 13 to 17 years-old may stay at the shelter for three weeks at a time (or sometimes longer, if necessary). Services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at no cost to teens or their families.  In addition to providing a safe haven, food and clothing to young people, teens receive intense individual counseling, group counseling and crisis stabilization.  Whenever possible, family counseling is also provided.  Of young people who come to us from an intact home, approximately 95% return home with supportive after-care counseling available.

Our Assisting Young Mothers program for pregnant and parenting girls who are homeless was full the day it opened and has a large waiting list.  This 18 to 24 month residential program for young women 16 to 24 years old and their babies helps the young women increase their parenting skills, continue their education, receive employment training and save towards the day they will leave the program and establish a home for themselves and their child.  The mothers work or attend school for at least 30 hours per week and participate in life skills classes. Our goal is to help these young women achieve their own goals - of becoming a more nurturing parent and of having the skills needed to become a contributing member of the community. Fifteen young women and their children participate in Assisting Young Mothers each year.

The Homeless Youth Initiative helps young people who are homeless without the support of a parent or guardian and who are still in high school. Last year at the end of the school year there were 360 young people in this precarious position. Before the Homeless Youth Initiative began five years ago, many students in this situation were unable to finish high school. Now we are able to do something to help them. We provide housing assistance, case management, life skills classes, educational supports and employment help. Program participants are 18 to 20 years old and must be completing high school. Last year we helped 130 students.

Our Transitional Living Program is similar to the Homeless Youth Initiative and serves homeless young people 18 to 22 years of age by providing rent support, and employment and educational assistance. The Transitional Living Program also helps to provide housing for homeless young people through host homes and rent assistance. The young people in this program must work or go to school at least 30 hours a week and create a savings account so that they can live independently once they graduate the program.  Case management, therapy, and life skills groups are provided to help increase their ability to live independently.

The Community Based Services at our Culmore and Springfield Family Resource Centers focus on parenting and family support. The centers are a collaborative effort among community-based organizations, the private sector and county agencies to bring services, information, and resources to parents and children such as computer learning courses, teen and youth programs, language classes, legal services, tutoring, assistance with forms (e.g. benefits, unemployment), and joint parent-and-child programs. Counselors worked with more than 2,000 young people last year in a variety of center and street-based programs.

Another Community Based Service, the Culmore Teen Center, served more than 250 youth this past year.  The drop-in center provides a safe place away from gang recruitment in one of the most heavily gang-infested areas in Fairfax.  Counselors at the center along with community volunteers, provide homework help, tutoring, and supervised recreation and field trips, counseling and community service projects.  The center also provides meals for those who need them. 

The Community Based Safe Youth Projects are after-school programs for 4th, 5th and 6th graders.  Our first Safe Youth Project in Culmore was so successful that we were able to open a second program in Annandale.  The programs provides homework help, tutoring, community service opportunities, computer skills, and recreational opportunities.  It was opened after police asked Alternative House if we could work with younger youth.  Local gangs have started recruiting children as young as 10 years old.  Waiting to provide prevention services beginning in middle school could be too late.  The Safe Youth Project has exceeded its enrollment projection of 30 youth at each location and provides neighborhood-based services four days a week.

Alternative House also offers a 24 hour national toll-free hotline - 1-800-SAY-TEEN for anyone in need of assistance.  Affiliated with the National Runaway Safeline, the hotline receives an average of 150 calls per month.  Free walk-in counseling is also provided for young people in crisis at our Emergency Shelter for Teenagers.