Helping Kids Find Their Way

ABOUT CROSSROADS HOPE ACADEMY

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Crossroads Hope Academy is a non-profit 501(c)(3) home for foster boys who have had multiple failed placements in the Florida foster care system. Our original campus is a 20-acre home and school located on the northeast corner of Babcock Ranch Wilderness Preserve in Charlotte County. Our second location, which opened October 2022, is a 13,000-square-foot home situated on 5 acres close to downtown Punta Gorda.

Making the transition from family life – even dysfunctional family life – to foster child is an unimaginably difficult proposition. Some kids have substantial complications for which the current foster care system is not well equipped to handle. These kids get moved from failed placement to failed placement. Their esteem suffers; they fall behind in school or drop out; many end up homeless.

Crossroads specializes in these cases. At Crossroads we take in these boys, between 12 and 17 years of age, and offer them a stable home – for most it is the first stable home they have ever known. Crossroads has specially trained staff and counselors who work to retrieve these kids from despair and help them grow and transition into well-adjusted and self-sufficient adults.

Crossroads became a full-time foster program in 2013. Prior to that Crossroads had contracted with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice for over 30 years. While there are many similarities between juvenile justice kids and foster kids, there also are many differences – not the least of which is that becoming a foster kid is never one of choice. No kid chooses to become a foster kid. These kids are in need of guidance, support and love – and they find this at Crossroads – and from you, our community. We cannot adequately thank you enough for the support you have shown our Crossroads family.

Crossroads would not be successful without the financial and volunteer support of our community. Providing the level of interaction, intercession, and care these boys need is much more costly than it is to meet the needs of kids who have not gone through their trauma. These costs are recouped by society ten-fold in the future as we break the cycle of government dependence, crime and irresponsible behavior which so often befalls kids who are otherwise abandoned.

We must never forget that these are just kids – we cannot abandon them.