Ground Broken For ​‘r Kids Expansion

Not every groundbreaking features dirt with toy dump trucks and colorful blue and green kid-size shovels alongside the ceremonial golden adult ones.

On Friday afternoon a groundbreaking did feature those addition.

The scene took place at 45 Dixwell Ave. as the ​‘r Kids Family Center broke ground on an expansion that will double its size and capacity to serve.

Seventy-five people including Mayor Toni Harp and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal gathered to cheer on the launch of a last leg of a $4.2 million project.

Founded more than 20 years ago by Randi Rubin Rodriguez and Sergio Rodriguez, ​‘r Kids, a state-licensed child-placement service, steps in to help kids and families at times of deep crisis, and has a 78 percent reunification rate.

At its heart of the current project is a doubling of the physical size of the building without changing the envelope — mainly through a second-floor addition that will cantilever over an existing driveway and yard on the north side of the building.

The project will double the capacity of the agency’s after-school program and add an infant/toddler and family trauma center. That willenable ​‘r Kids to work with vulnerable children and their families, promoting permanency, safety and stability for through services to their biological, foster or adoptive families.

Of the $4.2 million goal, $2.4 is already in hand, said Maria Winter, a consultant on the project.

That represents $1 million bonded for the project through the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), another $702,000 provided through a grant from the state’s Office of Policy and Management (OPM), and private and foundation donations including a $250,000 gift from the Amour Propre Fund, whose president, Lindy Lee Gold, is also the honorary chair of the capital campaign.

That leaves $1.8 million to go as the project construction gets underway.

The addition of an infant and child family trauma center will enable social workers and staff to intervene at the earliest, pre-verbal stages when kids can’t express what they are going through, said Winter.

The after-school program will also be able to expand/ Winter estimated that the staff, currently at eight, will also double. Click here for more details about the expansion, as Rubin Rodriguez shared the plans a year ago with the Dixwell Community Management Team, among other community groups.

With more than 4,000 kids in foster care on any given day statewide — that figure was provided by one of the event’s speakers, Ken Mysogland, DCF’s bureau chief for external affairs — there is plenty of need out there.

As some kids climbed the ceremonial dirt pile to explore and play with the trucks, speakers praised the social service organization for the way its services and staff stabilize, heal, and reunite hundreds of traumatized kids and their families going through foster care, adoptive care, and, in the case of biological parents, learning the basics of parenting and other challenges.

Mayor Harp said ​‘r Kids interventions are crucial to ​“stop the cycle of disruption and start the healing.”

Lindy Gold said she was drawn to the mission of ​‘r Kids after learning the profound and often deleterious effects on kids when they are shuttled from one foster situation to another.

She said kids who move from place to place frequently don’t have appropriate luggage. They are often given just a garbage bag in which quickly to throw their things. What does that say how we value these kids? she asked rhetorically.

And kids who move frequently from one foster care setting to another correlate directly with much higher incidents of attempted suicide, she added.

Seeing first hand how the caring staff at ​‘r Kids, founded nearly 20 years ago by Randi Rubin Rodriguez and Sergio Rodriguez, is rescuing kids and families at times of deep crisis — - and has an impressive 78 percent reunification rate — Gold said she dived right in with support and enthusiasm.

If all goes well, the ribbon cutting will take place in a year.