Donate Now 
Contact Us 
Subscribe
Programs
We have two programs that help us to accomplish our mission, TRIPS and My Friend’s House. Through these programs we are able to change the lives of children and young adults who are in need of help.
My Friend’s House
Every year in the state of Texas, thousands of children suffering from abuse, neglect, and abandonment are removed from their homes. There are not enough foster homes in the state to house them all, so Child Protective Services has a limited number of options for placement. Those options are even more limited when it comes to groups of siblings. Usually, they have to be separated, but thanks to City House, there is now a place where siblings can stay together: My Friend’s House.
When we built My Friend’s House, our emergency shelter for children ages newborn to 17, we didn’t want it to be just another shelter; we wanted it to be a home environment where brothers and sisters could heal together. Separating children from their siblings after removing them from their home only adds to their trauma, so it was the last thing we wanted to happen. We wanted to give them the peace of mind of knowing where their siblings were and seeing them every day. We wanted them to be able to play, eat, and heal together. We didn’t want to see these children separated from the ones who had been there for them through all of their trauma. We created My Friend’s House, right here in North Texas, so they could stay together.
Opened in late 2009, My Friend’s House has earned a reputation as a premier shelter for sibling placement. Since My Friend’s House is a facility equipped and licensed to care for children of all ages, CPS has more time to find family members and foster homes that can take in sibling groups. This has increased the percentage of siblings that remain together.
The time after children are removed from their home is very traumatic. These vulnerable children need safe shelter, nutritious food, appropriate clothing, medical and dental care, access to education, and therapy to adjust various behaviors. My Friend’s House provides all of these as well as a comfortable home environment with a kind and loving staff, thereby reducing the effects of trauma and providing the consistency and predictability that children need to overcome the suffering they have endured.
We named the shelter My Friend’s House because we didn’t want the children staying with us to have to tell others they were living in a shelter. So when asked, they can say, “I live at My Friend’s House.”
If you’d like to help our children, please visit our Volunteer page for more information.
Success Story
Heaven
One year, during the holidays, a large sibling group came to stay in our emergency shelter “My Friend’s House” after a traumatic death in their home caused CPS to remove them. A few days after arriving at our shelter, our staff drove the children to the funeral. On the way back to the shelter, they asked typical young children questions about heaven: Do you stay in a house in heaven? Are there dogs in heaven? A very sweet conversation among siblings about a place we all ponder at some point in our lives.
When they returned to the shelter, the oldest child grabbed the hand of our shelter director and said, “I hope Heaven is like it is here because then I know he’s safe.” For that director and for all the staff at City House, that was the highest praise from the best source possible. Our goal is to make these severely traumatized children feel safe during the scariest time in their lives – comparison to Heaven was more than anyone ever expected.
