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Children’s Place, Inc., an Aiken-based nonprofit that has provided programs for more than 35 years to support and strengthen children and families, cut the ribbon on its new $7.8 million home on Thursday, Nov.
7. The 16,000-square-foot building is located on 8 acres of land at 137 Prosperity Lane in Aiken. It replaces the organization’s original home, located in a residence and a former church building from the 1880s on the corner of Barnwell Avenue and Fairfield Street.
Children’s Place offers therapeutic childcare, individual and family counseling, support services for families referred by the S.C. Department of Social Services and parenting skills training.
Executive Director Peggy Ford said the new building will allow them to “serve more children and support and empower more families.” “We have dedicated counseling and therapy rooms for the first time,” she said, adding that they’ll no longer need to meet with clients “on porches and picnic tables and sometimes in our cars.” Ford said the organization realized in 2013 that a capital campaign would be necessary to raise money for a new building.
The public campaign began in 2016, chaired by Scott Hunter and attorney Ronnie Maxwell. Hunter, former publisher of the Aiken Standard, died in September 2018. “He worked hard as long as he could,” Maxwell said about Hunter at a donor recognition event on Wednesday, Nov.
6. “I’m sure he’s looking down tonight and is proud of what we have here. Scott was a wonderful servant here in the Aiken area and a wonderful fan of Children’s Place.
” The group raised $6.7 million, Ford said. “Without Hunter, and without Maxwell, we’d never have had this happen,” she said, announcing that the organization’s boardroom would be named for the two men.
“The Hunter/Maxwell board room exists, and we exist because of you,” she said. Ford also announced that the building’s entrance lobby would be named for Ann Suich, who was executive director of Children’s Place’s precursor organization, The Services Council, from 1980 to 1989. “Your picture will hang there forever,” Ford told Suich.
“She’s the one who had the vision for therapeutic childcare in the South,” Ford said. “We were the first in South Carolina, and we were the third on the East Coast.” Maxwell highlighted contributions from Rob and Pam Johnston, who contributed $2 million toward the new building, and from the Kevin & Brittany Kisner Foundation, which contributed $500,000 for construction of the facility’s playground.
Maxwell said the Aiken County legislative delegation and the Aiken City Council each secured $500,000 for the project. Rob Johnston, who grew up in Aiken and moved back from Atlanta in 2006, said he asked people what the most efficient local charity was. “Everybody said Children’s Place, and that just percolated until 10 years later they had a capital campaign,” Johnston said.
"It just felt that it was not only the right thing, but the only thing I could do. When there’s a great cause, a great mission, run by great people, it can’t fail,” Johnston said. Professional golfer Kevin Kisner said his foundation has supported Children’s Place since 2016.
“We love the organization. We love Peggy. We love everyone who works here.
We love what they’re all about and the children they can affect and we hope to keep supporting them as much as we can. We love being partners with them,” Kisner said. “I think Children’s Place does some of the most amazing work in this community because they’re reaching our most vulnerable kids and making a difference not only with those children but with their families, and that focus on the whole family is so important,” Brittany Kisner said.
Sara Wood has been a volunteer at Children’s Place for 35 years, including 34 years on the board of directors and service on the capital campaign committee and the building committee. She said she was first inspired to get involved after hearing Ford speak about Children’s Place and the work they do. “She talked about all the trauma and abuse and how they help the children, and she said, ‘It’s not a sad place.
It’s a happy place, because children feel safe there,’ and that just struck me so I went for a tour and started volunteering." “The staff is just so caring and Peggy Ford is just the most amazing human being I know,” Wood said. At the ribbon cutting, Ford thanked the assembled group for their generosity.
“I stand here representing so many children, and staff, and families who have grown, and healed in very crowded conditions who now will be able to practice, and I am excited, too, about what the future holds,” Ford said. “Thank you all, because without this generous community we would not be here today. With great gratitude I say thank you to everyone who has made this day possible,” Ford said.
The origins of Children’s Place were a grass-roots effort in the 1950s aimed at supporting low-income parents and their children. In 1961 The Services Council of Aiken Country was formed to teach life and leadership skills and provide childcare to Aiken’s African American community. It was directed by social worker and community leader Josie Hazel.
In 1968 Suich and Pat Donovan incorporated the Services Council as an independent nonprofit, operating in a space provided by Second Baptist Church. In 1970 it moved into the former Immanuel Presbyterian Church at the corner of Barnwell Avenue and Fairfield Street, where it has remained until now. Suich was on the board of The Services Council from 1975 to 1980 and was executive director from 1980 to 1989.
She led the establishment of The Children’s Place, a treatment center for abused children and the first of its kind in South Carolina. By 1984 the organization expanded its services and until 1989 operated both its original childcare program for low-income families and a new treatment program for children involved in open child protective cases. It was home to South Carolina’s first therapeutic child care program, one of only two in the state.
In 1989 The Services Council became Children’s Place, Inc. with Peggy Ford as executive director. She shifted the focus beyond solely addressing child abuse to a broader mental health approach addressing adverse childhood experiences and trauma.
The organization now offers comprehensive, research-driven services for children and families in Aiken, Bamberg, Barnwell, Edgefield, and McCormick counties..
