Pittsburgh Presbytery - Mission Agencies

Mars Home for Youth

UNITED WAY OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY # 465
UNITED WAY OF BUTLER COUNTY #6046

521 Route 228
Mars, PA 16046
724-625-3141
Contact: Shellyn Shoenthal, Community Relations & Fundraising Director

MISSION

For 130 years, Mars Home for Youth (MHY) has been meeting the ever-changing needs of youth and families in crisis.

Today, MHY focuses on residential and community-based services for youth who are faced with challenging behavioral and emotional issues due to abuse, neglect and mental illness. They depend on MHY for treatment, to build self-esteem, spiritual well-being, and continue their education in a supportive environment so that they leave with a foundation to build a brighter future.

CURRENT PROGRAMS

Residential Services
Currently, MHY operates five residential group homes, some of which are licensed residential treatment facilities, for both male and female youth between the ages of 13-18. Through intensive, individualized and group therapeutic services, MHY staff work to help ameliorate the behavioral and emotional issues, and barriers that prevent youth from succeeding in home, school and community settings. MHY’s residential services follow a creative approach to building self-esteem, problem solving, developing life skills and appropriate social behavioral, as well as meeting their individual academic needs.

Community-Based Services
MHY is continually working to build community-based services that reach at-risk youth and families with a goal to prevent youth from needing out of home placement and to provided a continuum of services following residential treatment.

Multisystemic Therapy Program
In 2000 MHY adopted the Multisystemic Therapy Program (MST) designed to serve dependant and delinquent youth who are at-risk of out of home placement or who are currently in placement. Trained MST therapists work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to provided referred youth and families with the skills and resources needed to cope with family, peer, school and community problems that helps prevent youth from entering out of home placement. Currently, MHY administers its MST program in Butler and Venango counties, with hopes to expand the program to other surrounding counties.

Longmore Academy
Mars Home for Youth’s Longmore Academy provides alternative education for at-risk youth. Both MHY residents and students from surrounding public school districts benefit from a structured, supportive learning environment that is responsive to behavioral and emotional factors that impede students’ academic success. The student to teacher ratio never exceeds 10:1, and every teacher is Pennsylvania state-certified and meet state education standards, thus allowing credits earned by students to transfer back to their home school district for promotion or graduation. The curriculum incorporates traditional core subjects with electives such as art, current events and character education. Remedial interventions, including tutoring and special education are provided to address academic deficiencies.

HISTORY

Mars Home for Youth has been addressing the needs of children and families in crisis for 130 years.

In 1877, a dying widow appealed to Rev. James Fulton, the young pastor of the Fourth United Presbyterian Church of Allegheny, to help her find homes for her five soon-to-be orphaned children. Rev. Fulton called together the women of the United Presbyterian churches of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City (now the North Side) and challenged them to find a solution to this problem. They women formed the United Presbyterian Women’s Association, and the first orphans’ home was opened in a rented six room house on Sherman Avenue in Pittsburgh in 1878.

Over the next 25 years, the United Presbyterian Women’s Association expanded their vision to include the aged and the sick. The United Presbyterian Home for the Aged, now part of Presbyterian Senior Care, and Columbia Hospital, which became part of the Forbes Health System, opened in Wilkinsburg. The Orphan’s Home also moved to two other sites on the North Side. In 1929, having outgrown its facilities once again, an estate was purchased in Mars, PA.

During the Depression years parents had no means to support their children would bring them to the home to be cared for until the age of 14 when they would either be returned home or placed in substituted care. In the 1950’s, the Home was renamed the United Presbyterian Home for Children as its emphasis began to reflect the change from caring for orphans to caring for children from broken homes. Until the mid-1970’s, the children came to the home either as orphans or from families broken by poverty or death.

In 1990 the name was changed to Mars Home for Youth and continues to serve youth who have been neglected and abused.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR INVOLVEMENT

Contact Mars Home for Youth about ways to host fund-raising and awareness-raising events
Consider a drive to collect in-kind donations (wish lists can be obtained)
Invite the Mars Home for Youth to provide to speak to your congregants
Consider inviting residents to participate in youth activities

VISIT US ON THE WEB

www.marshomeforyouth.org