Gladney Blog

You've seen their photos, you've read their advocacy posts, and now, we're highlighting them all together!

Meet Jayden! Jayden is an adorable 5-year-old boy who is strong and active. Jayden's teachers at school say he is quite cooperative, gets along well with his peers, and is not shy with strangers. He is trusting of others and likes to be close with people. Jayden likes watching cartoons and is especially interested in wheels. He also likes to play at the park, throw balls, and scoot around a bicycle. Jayden lives a stable daily life with a normal routine. Jayden is easily excited and likes to attract attention from adults to test their reactions.

Hear From Our Team

We asked our team questions about how they've managed the last year in a pandemic.

We are so excited to introduce you to Miss Josephine! Josephine is 7-and-a-half-year-old girl who is lively, outgoing, and gentle. She likes to interact with others and tends to play with younger children. She also likes to play sports and is happy most of the time. Josephine has recently been practicing keeping her school bag organized and putting her books in place.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be the craftiest person, but when asked to come up with ideas for the residents in the group home, I thought to myself ‘challenge accepted’. Before starting my internship in the home, I created a PowerPoint of different activities for both indoor and outdoor. I used most of those activities for my planning, but others just came one a whim. This particular activity was one of those on-a-whim ideas. 

Looking for ways to celebrate AAPI heritage month? Check out dual language books! The book Series Mina Learns Chinese was created by Katrina Lui, an American born Chinese/Taiwanese mom whose mission is “To add more Asian faces to the world of children’s books and to leave a legacy for my daughter by creating books where she can see herself reflected in them.”

MATCHED!

We are so excited to introduce you to Julia! We have lots of adorable photos of 6-year-old Julia that we can’t share publicly, so please be sure to join our Taiwan Waiting Child Advocacy group on Facebook to see them!

Lessons Learned & New Implementations

Within 24 hours of Texas’ governor’s order to stay at home in March 2020, Gladney was able to ensure that 95% of our employees who could work remotely were set up to do so in their homes. Microsoft Teams (which Gladney had had in place for over a year, though not used consistently) and other platforms, such as Zoom, quickly became commonplace and allowed us to maintain connection with our staff and teams somewhat seamlessly during the stay-at-home order. Gladney has had a business continuity plan on the shelf for some time, but this was the first real test of how it worked in practice.