By Gretchen Keiser

“Our program says the person is what matters.”

In a lengthy interview, those words summed up Sister Mary Fran Bruns’ assessment of the people and combined living and school community that makes up the Village of St. Joseph.

Some of the ingredients from her perspective – she is now administrator of the Village located on a campus-like site in southwest Atlanta, but has been connected with its work in other ways over 11 years – are a “hands-in-there” commitment to kids, a demanding, structured environment for the kids that gives but also asks a lot of them and their families, and a dedicated staff.

A program that clearly walks a tightrope of providing love and positive feedback, but also honest assessment for kids with real difficulties, the work at the Village takes time and doesn’t show quick results. Speaking of one child able to develop into “something of a leader” and return home to the family after spending three years at the Village, Sister Mary Fran said the staff could have given up after the first year. But the child goes home knowing “they did not let go of me, they hung in there with me,” she observed.

One of the guiding rules is “you stay with a youngster,” she said. And for the child, the bottom line is “for them to know we’re not going to let you go just because you are acting out, absolutely not.” Kids go home when their view of themselves and their lives are turned around, she said, not when the change hasn’t taken place.

“Many (children) feel there is absolutely nothing ahead for them,” Sister Mary Fran said. “When they start turning on to their life and what is ahead for them, that is a beautiful, beautiful moment.”

Children, both girls and boys from six years old through about 17 years old, live in “cottages” grouped by age and sex on the campus and go to school with a curriculum emphasizing the basics in learning and educational skills. Individual, group and family therapy is provided. The kids live at the Village Monday through Friday, but go home to their families every weekend so that the healing process taking place doesn’t occur isolated from the family.

“Our whole program is to rehabilitate the kid back into the family. The whole purpose is to get them home,” said Sister Mary Fran.

Family stresses and fractures run the gamut from the most severe emotional trauma and abuse to more familiar breakdowns in communication, discipline and structure that can deeply affect children at home or in school. In some cases divorce or the death of a parent has triggered problems that undercut a child’s stability and create dark pockets of misdirected anger and fear.

Some parents say “this child has been difficult since birth,” Sister Mary Fran said. On the other hand, sometimes parents have “not been willing to listen to kids,” not given enough time to the kids. “Abandonment is an issue for our kids,” she said.

Other children are not behavioral problems at all, but kids with learning disabilities that were never properly diagnosed and now a layer of emotional problems from trying to cope with criticism and rejection has settled on top of the school crisis. Some of the teens have stumbled into adulthood too early. Often families come to the Village in a major crisis, Sister Mary Fran said.

Up to 39 children can live at the Village and an additional nine can attend school there as day students, but live at home. Right now there are 34 residents and five day school students.

The staff includes lay people and sisters, many, like Sister Mary Fran, sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet who carried the work with children at the Village over from the order’s initial staffing of an orphanage in Washington, Georgia. The closing of the orphanage and opening of the Village took place in 1967, when emphasis was shifted to trying to restore whole families. Although the campus is in Atlanta, families come from all over the state, and, at the moment, about half the families being served by the Village are Catholic.

The Village is under the umbrella of Catholic Social Services, and most families are assisted by the archdiocese to cover part of the cost of tuition. Without subsidy, the cost is $1,200 a month, but a subsidy bringing the cost to $800 a month is provided by the archdiocese, Sister Mary Fran said. Beyond that families can negotiate a plan that offers care for less, but asks them to repay the difference without interest in the future. The Village is always in need of additional financial support because of the gap between costs and what families can pay, sister Mary Fran said. Two archdiocesan collections each year are taken up specifically for the Village: one at Christmas and one at Easter. A newly formed Board of Advisors, made up of prominent community people, is intended to spread the word of the Village and hopefully find new friends.

Visiting the Village and coming to see the community firsthand is important, Sister Mary Fran said. While elements obviously reflect contemporary thinking in social services, “I really truly believe this is the Lord’s work” also, the administrator said. She cited the “psychological healing of families, reconciliation – parent with parent and parent with children.”

“It’s seeing change take place in a person that is so life-giving” for the staff and for the kids. Sometimes, often, it is one of the kids who will tell another. “I was where you are, don’t give up,” she said. It is “that kind of an energy force that keeps the staff wanting to stay here. There’s a real deep commitment on the part of the staff.”

While financial difficulties are always present, it is the life-giving nature of the work which is sustaining, she said. “It has to continue and it will continue because something like that can’t die.”