As a private, non-profit children's home and school, our mission is to provide a safe, stable, healing, living and learning environment for children from families in crisis. Children come to us from across North Carolina, primarily from 27 western counties. In our care, residents live in comfortable cottages with caring adults who model appropriate relationships and supervise the living environment.

Campus residents attend Crossnore Academy, the charter school on campus. Weekdays in the Belk Dining Hall, breakfast and lunches are served and weekend meals are in the cottages. Recreational, travel and student work opportunities abound.

Crossnore offers programs of service that address varying levels and stages of need.

• Short Term Care Residents come into care on short notice, sometimes in the middle of the night. They may be victims of abuse or neglect; their parent might have been jailed; or a separation from the adults in their home has been recommended. Short Term Care establishes a safe, secure, stable environment for the child. This program is time limited to approximately 90 days. If the home situation is not stabilized, then the child has easy access to a longer term program at Crossnore.
• Youth Clarification Children come to Crossnore bewildered, upset and often angry at the adults who have determined their family environment is unsafe or inappropriate for them. Staff helps children understand their circumstances after a local social services agency has severed parental rights.
• Family Clarification - For up to a year, Crossnore staff works to clarify a child's status with his or her family, while helping the child to overcome the issues that brought him or her into care. If, in that period, the child's custodian determines that the child has made sufficient progress toward his or her goals, and the family makes progress in resolving its issues, the child can return to its family. If that clarification period reveals the family issues require continued separation, the child can go into longer-term care. Eventually, a child who stays at Crossnore will enter the Preparation for Adult Living Program.
• Preparation for Adult Living Program - In PAL, students learn all the skills necessary to begin life on their own. They learn how to find a job and apartment, how to budget, shop and save.
• Respite Care - To preserve placements, promote stability and give the child a respite from himself and others, Crossnore School established a Respite Cottage. In that cottage a child can spend several days and
  • regain self control
  • give tensions time and guidance to work themselves out
  • preserve the placement, so the child can return to the cottage, rather than having to be transferred or discharged to a different environment
  • protect cottage harmony.

  This cottage is available to Foster Parents and Adoptive Families, too, because sometimes destabilizing tensions arise that threaten harmony.

  "We provide a place where foster parents and adoptive parents can leave their kids in a safe, secure environment for a night or two while they go get recharged," said Crossnore Executive Director Phyllis Crain.

• Day Care - For children from birth to age five in the Dr. Emma Sloop Fink Child Development Center.
• After School Program - To provide quality after-school care and summer program for elementary school age students.

Keeping Sibling Groups Together

One of Crossnore School's operating principles is to keep sibling groups together. Too often, when children are removed from their home,siblings are sent to different placements, depending on their age and need.

Crossnore School makes every effort to be able to meet the needs of every child in a sibling group so that they may stay together.