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Healing center will relocate to new facility

October 19, 2000

LANSING - Because the needs of children grieving the loss of a parent or sibling are not often met as well they could be, officials at Ele’s Place are happy to be expanding to their own facility.

The organization plans to move onto Sparrow Hospital’s St. Lawrence Campus, 1201 W. Oakland Ave. in Lansing.

Sparrow Hospital is leasing the property to the center at a rate of one dollar every thirty years.

“Essentially since we were founded we’ve been in borrowed space,” said Betsy Stover, a board member of Ele’s Place and one of the co-chairs of the campaign to expand its facilities. “(Pilgrim Congregational First Church of Christ has) been generous for going on nine years.”

Ele’s Place is a healing center where children, and sometimes other family members, come once a week to attend support groups in their age bracket and share with others their age. The center serves children ages 3-18 and has a young adult program for people age 19-26.

“We are the only independent center in Michigan that primarily serves the needs of grieving children and their families,” Stover said. “There are several hospitals and hospice programs that have added children’s grief support to them (but) most of them are time limited - (grief) doesn’t work that way.

“Some of our families are there for six weeks and some of our families are there for one and a half to two years.”

The demand is more than their current location can handle, said Laurie Strauss Baumer, the executive director. The organization currently services about 500 children and families per year.

“The reason for this new facility is about 25 percent of the time we have to place families on a waiting list,” Baumer said. “It’s a rotten thing to have a to tell a family.”

Stover said they have also had to increase the size of the groups to accommodate more children and families.

“What we’ve had to do in the last four years is we’ve had to increase the size of the groups, making it not as valuable to the children that week,” she said. “(With the move) the quality of the program will be immediately improved. Maybe we’ll be able to do programs during the day or have after-school programming - just be a lot more flexible.”

The new facility will be a one-story building that will include six children’s rooms, four adult group rooms, two activity rooms, a 1,500 square foot family room, a library, a new family intake room and administration offices.

“One nice thing is it’s not going to look institutional,” Baumer said. “(The facility will be) attractive to our neighboring residents.”

Baumer said Ele’s Place will begin moving into the new facility by the end of the year and will hopefully open it by summer.

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