General Agency

• The agency was started in 1872 by a group of concerned church women who wanted to provide a home for the children orphaned and living on the streets.

• Our main campus in Brainerd occupies over 17 acres of land and 90,000 square feet of building.

• Our organization is featured around the country as a unique and highly successful business model for a system of small agencies being supported by one larger core agency, also called “shared services”.

• Between our main campus and our off-site centers and classrooms, the agency employs more than 300 full and part time staff members.

• Chambliss Center for Children provides child care to teachers inside of Hamilton County schools to help increase retention of young, energetic teachers.

• The organization manages several off-site centers throughout the city, each with their own teachers and directors.

• The agency was the site of an HBO Documentary in 2014 entitled “Paycheck to Paycheck” which chronicled a year in the life of a low-income, single mother named Katrina Gilbert who utilizes our programs.
  

Extended Child Care Program

• Chambliss Center for Children operates a child care program, operating 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.

• We served hundreds children aging from 6 weeks to 12 years old in our Extended Early Childhood Education Program last year.

• All parents utilizing our Extended Child Care Program are either working or in school, making our program essential to their ability to support their family.

• We have some of the best playgrounds in Chattanooga to ensure that all of our children have fun, safe, age-appropriate equipment to play on!

• The first five years of a child’s life are crucial to their physical, emotional, social, & educational development, making early childhood education one of the best ways to give a child a good start in life.

• Parents in our Extended Childcare Program pay, on average, less than 25% of the cost of caring for their children, leaving us to raise the remainder of the funds to provide high quality care to their children.
  

Residential PrograM

•  We serve foster families in Hamilton County and the surrounding nine counties as a training and placement center.

• Children brought into state care, removed from their households due to abuse, abandonment, and neglect, are placed with one of our loving, responsible foster homes until they are reunited with family, placed with a relative, or adopted.

• We have to turn away hundreds of children every year because we do not have a foster family able to care for them, making foster homes one of our greatest needs.

• Behind financial support, our largest need is for quality foster homes for our children and youth.

• Our Transitional Living Program provides stable housing and careful case management for youth who have aged out of traditional foster care at age 18 and have chosen to participate in Extension of Foster Care (EFC) services in the state of Tennessee.