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Family & Children’s Place is sad to share that our Jeffersonville, IN office sustained severe damage in a building fire on Sunday, Dec. 20. Mercifully, no staff or clients were in the building at the time of the fire. The cause of the fire remains unknown.

Coverage of the fire can be found on the WDRB, WAVE3, WLKY, WHAS11, and Jeffersonville News and Tribune websites.

Founded in 1883, Family & Children’s Place builds strong families in Louisville and Southern Indiana by preventing, stopping, and healing child abuse and neglect. Our Jeffersonville office – located downtown at 100 West Court Avenue – served as one of our child advocacy centers, providing child victims of sexual and physical abuse with a safe place to tell their story to law enforcement officials and child protective services. The office also provided professional counseling services to hundreds of children and families impacted by abuse, neglect, and other forms of trauma.

Child advocacy staff have been serving clients in-person throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and are working hard to ensure Southern Indiana clients can be seen at our New Albany office or another facility that has yet to be determined. Counseling staff have been operating almost entirely remotely since the start of the pandemic, thus minimizing the impact to those clients.

“I’m so proud of the dedicated professionals we have here at Family & Children’s Place,” says President/CEO Pam Darnall. “We’ve already taken a number of steps to ensure no child or family is negatively impacted by this fire. We are deeply committed to every single one of our clients.”

We are working closely with the building landlord, local authorities, and our insurance provider to assess the full scope of the damage and to develop a plan to recover. Any immediate needs related to the building fire will be shared with the community here on our website.

This year has presented a number of challenges to Family & Children’s Place – including, of course, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Donations have dropped by a staggering 26% as we prepare to serve more than 4,500 Louisville and Southern Indiana families in 2021. Members of the community who would like to support Family & Children’s Place during this unprecedented time are encouraged to make a financial donation at famchildplace.org/donate. All donations are tax-deductible and will be used where most needed.