New location a great fit for Restoration Family Services

By Kathryn “Chazz” Hirschfeld
Staff writer

HAMILTON — During the National Foster Care Month of May, the Journal Record was invited to an open house to tour the new Restoration Family Services and Kids for Life facility in Hamilton.
Located on the corner of James Crump Memorial Drive and 2nd Ave. S.W., the building which formerly housed a dentist office has been completely remodeled to better serve children in foster care, their foster parents and birth parents, and the officials, human resources and law enforcement personnel who help make both organizations possible and successful.
Director, founder, foster parent and local child advocate Melissa Mathieson and her husband, David, the facilities director, helped not only supervise the remodeling of the building, but did a lot of the work themselves.
The resourceful couple purchased a few items for the new location, used as many donated items as possible, and also brought some of their own furniture from home.
And at home is how you feel when you enter and the exact atmosphere they want to provide for children in care and those who love them and provide for them temporarily and permanently.
David noted before the complete overhaul, the office building had been vacant for some time, but is a great fit for the needs of both Restoration Family Services and Kids for Life.
“All of the rooms were set up just perfectly for us,” Melissa added. “We are a supervised visitation center for birth parents to visit their children who are in foster care. We also do drug screens here on site.
“We do transportation for children to and from doctor’s appointments and visits, and mental health appointments.
“We can also do sitter services if a child needs to be hospitalized where we can go sit with them while they’re in the hospital.
“But primarily what happens here are supervised visits and drug tests for our birth families.”

Visitation rooms all decorated differently, but all contain tables
The facility has four different visit rooms, geared toward the needs of the children being visited.
“We have a play room,” Melissa explained. “We have a room that is set up for larger siblings. We have an art room and we have a game room.
“And you’ll notice all of our rooms have tables in them. We are kind of modeling a preferred way for families to interact so that when they leave, the children will

remember, ‘Oh we used to sit at the table and color when we visited.’ ‘Oh, we used to sit in the game room and play cards or legos or puzzles.’
“The table represents family for us. We’re set up kind of like a home here with couches and tables and rugs and televisions, because we wanted more of a home-like feeling for children to have to interact with family.”
The facility also includes a full nursery set up for babies where they can nap and be rocked.
A few more rooms are designated to store donated items and materials purchased with monetary donations.
A nice office area is also included, with camera views showing each room readily available for added safety.

New multi-purpose room made possible by $20,000 Walmart grant
The last room to be remodeled in the facility was the garage, which was turned into a large multi-purpose “Friends and Family Room,” through a generous $20,000 Walmart grant and more elbow grease from the Mathiesons.
“We’re able to do birthday parties and celebrations in here,” Melissa said. “We can do trainings here. And it’s a meeting area, as well.
“And just every so often, it’s a place for our department of human resources social workers to come and sit for just a minute, which they hardly ever get to do because they are always running.
“It’s a big difference to go from a garage to a multi-purpose room. All of this was done with a renovation grant from our local Walmart.”
Several staff members from the Hamilton Walmart Supercenter were present during the open house, including store manager Selena Otts Glover, market coordinator Becca Stults and people lead Sara Miller.
The group agreed on one word to describe the area, “Amazing!” They noted the grant monies came from a Strategic Initiative Fund where applications were submitted from throughout North Alabama, North Mississippi and Tennessee.
“Our regional team selected the store to receive the grant based on the applications submitted,” Stults explained. “There were only two organizations chosen in the entire southeast division and Restoration Family Services and Kids for Life was one of those.”

A special place
with personal ties
Another special place in the facility is a large storage area called “Katie’s Closet,” named after the couple’s adopted three-year-old daughter. Originally taken in by them for foster care, Katie…