Statements
Mission
Special Kids is a nonprofit outpatient pediatric therapy and skilled nursing facility with a mission to serve Jesus Christ by caring for His children. We serve children from birth through age 21 with a wide variety of diagnoses and medical complexities, ranging from medically fragile, developmentally delayed to typically developing children. Special Kids, a Comprehensive Outpatient Rehabilitation facility, offers speech, occupational, physical, and feeding therapies in addition to daytime pediatric skilled nursing care.
Background
In 1998, motivated by the love of Jesus Christ, Carrie Goodwin, a nurse, and her father, Dick Kleinau, founded Special Kids. Discouraged by observing the harsh realities that the families of children with special needs face, Carrie envisioned a place where all peoples would be welcomed with Christian love and healing arms regardless of socioeconomic status or cultural background. Her father, who himself had a grandson with special needs, captured Carrie's vision. Working alongside her father and with the financial support of the Christy Houston Foundation, Carrie opened Special Kids debt-free in September, 1998.
Impact
Many families in need of the services offered by Special Kids face several difficult challenges simultaneously. Financial, relational, health, and logistical pressures add substantial strains to the family unit. Special Kids strives to alleviate some of these strains so that the family unit remains strong and enables all children to reach their highest developmental potential physically, socially, and educationally.
Needs
Special Kids' five most pressing needs are as follows:
1. Recovery and growth of skilled nursing program from COVID impact.
2. Implementation of policies/procedures system.
3. Re-shape and implement effective performance management.
4. Re-shaping our culture to meet the needs of our diverse community.
5. The growth of our leaders and staff through training and continual education.
CEO Statement
The Special Kids team has been blessed to serve children with special needs in Middle Tennessee since 1998. As we serve, we are focused on three priority areas of safe & satisfied patients, engage & satisfied employees and operational stability. We are focusing on operation systems and ensuring efficient and effective systems flow and reducing the amount of time to get new patients on-boarded and served.
God's provision in and through the pandemic has left us amazed. Moving ahead, maintaining adequate staffing levels continues to prove to be a challenge. Increasing inflation also proves to be a concern as we consider the community's ability to contribute to our mission. Despite the present challenges, we have many reasons to be excited as we look ahead into 2023 and beyond.
The number of children with special needs in our community continues to rise. By year 2025, we have estimated that the number of children with special needs in Rutherford County -aged birth to 18 years- will exceed 17,700. It is with the help of our community supports and guidance from our board of directors that we will be strengthened to respond in love and be able to care for the children and their families.
We will continue to enhance our culture, invest in our team members, and improve our systems to position ourselves for greater quality of care in our community. As we look ahead over the next five years, we know that Jesus has great plans for Special Kids. We plan to expand our Murfreesboro campus and expand our services into another community in Tennessee. I am excited to see how Jesus guides us to daily fulfill our mission to meet the needs of His children - one child, one family, one community at a time.
Board Chair Statement
It's been called "a place of healing," "a place of love and genuine care," "a place where miracles take place," "a place of comfort," and many other feelings expressed by its patients, families, and the community at large.
I would echo these expressions and personally take great strength in knowing that special needs children can receive the help they need because of a Christian-based organization in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In 1998, Dick Kleineau and his daughter Carrie felt the Lord leading them to start an organization that would provide outstanding occupational, physical, speech, and recreational therapies along with skilled nursing care to these precious children regardless of their family's ability to pay. Since opening their doors, Special Kids has served more than 18,230 therapy and 8,200 nursing sessions to 618 total patients from six different counties.
I am a native of Murfreesboro and grew up living next door to a family that had a child with Down syndrome. At that time there were not many avenues for services for this child. In fact, my dad and I were the only ones in the neighborhood outside of his family that would spend any time with him. Through these encounters, I developed a real love for special needs children and what their families faced every day. Being special education teachers, both my wife and daughter shared this love.
My first exposure to Special Kids was through a program called Leadership Rutherford (the county Murfreesboro is in). One requirement for all participants was a project working with different local organizations. My project was to work with Special Kids. After learning and understanding more about the organization and the benefits to the community and beyond and seeing it in operation, I was sold. The love between patients and Special Kids staff members was just pouring from their faces.
The support from community members, former patients and their families, and many others are the fuel that continue to keep the dream alive. I can honestly say that no one that visits Special Kids can't help but have their lives changed forever and any investment made in the organization will touch many more lives than can be imagined.
Service Categories |
|
| Primary Category: | Health Care - Rehabilitative Care |
| Secondary Category: | - |
| Tertiary Category: | - |
Areas Served
We serve children from the greater Middle Tennessee region.
| TN - Cumberland |
| TN - Robertson |
| TN - Bedford |
| TN - Cannon |
| TN - Coffee |
| TN - Davidson |
| TN - DeKalb |
| TN - Franklin |
| TN - Marshall |
| TN - Rutherford |
| TN - Warren |
| TN - Williamson |
| TN - Lincoln |
| TN - Maury |
| TN - Putnam |
| TN - Wilson |
