About the Nonprofit
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The mission of Ryan’s Place is to provide support in a safe environment where grieving children, teens, and their families can share their experiences as they move through the grieving process. Ryan’s Place Inc. is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation established in 2002 that provides support services for children, teens, young adults and their families who have experienced the terminal illness or death of a loved one. Services are provided at no cost to families and without consideration of race, religion, sexual orientation or geographic boundaries. Ryan’s Place provides services to children and families in Northern Indiana. Counties include, but are not limited to: Elkhart, St. Joseph, Kosciusko, Lagrange, Noble, Marshall, and one county in Southern Michigan.
Founded17 years ago, Ryan’s Place has served over 10,000 individuals in our regular grief support program in Goshen, numerous school programs, and individual counseling programs, a bereaved by suicide group, and a crisis support team. Ryan’s Place is considered a community expert on issues relating to children’s grief issues.
Ryan’s Place believes that healing from grief isn’t just important for the bereaved, it is important for the entire community. This is true because a variety of negative behaviors and symptoms often can be linked to unresolved grief. Unresolved grief, when acted out through negative behaviors, becomes not only a family problem but also a school and community problem. Often children have no model for resolving their grief and find themselves lost and without hope or direction. Ryan’s Place assists children, teens, and their parents, or guardians, to identify and use their coping and personal strengths and support systems to adjust and to process their grief and loss. Ryan’s Place is committed to providing the whole family the opportunity and safety to work through their feelings of grief and to be able to connect these feelings with personal behaviors and family choices.
Children learn to respect and validate their own feelings in the grief process, and then see the possibility of reinvesting back into life. Facing the death of a parent, sibling, grandparent or friend is particularly overwhelming when no community resources are available to help during this incredibly difficult time of their lives.
Having built a strong positive reputation over the past 16 years, Ryan’s Place now considered is the go-to center on grief-related issues in the community, especially those that pertain to children. With our focus on helping families heal after a death, we are able to offer children and their families a safe place to grieve. Ryan’s Place has received many endorsements from other professionals in the community, especially from our clients and personnel in schools where we have our programs.
