Murphy-Harpst
Success Story: Murphy-Harpst has been helping at-risk children for 100 years.
He was a “hard case.” Only 13, the boy had been shuffled among more than 40 residential placements, to the point where he was denied admission in other programs.
He was living alone in a hotel when the Evolve program of the Murphy-Harpst Children’s Center, which has locations to house underserved youth in Conyers and Augusta, took him in for six months. While living there, he received counseling, tutoring and social skills training and was taught life skills like cooking and cleaning. Now he is living with his grandmother and not just surviving but thriving.
Murphy-Harpst started as an orphanage in Cedartown in 1924 and still has its main campus there. It helps children age 12 and older who are dealing with an array of troubles – addiction, abuse, trauma, abandonment, neglect – to get their lives stabilized in nurturing situations, including residential programs and placements with foster, adoptive and reunited families.
“We stand in the gap by working alongside local and state agencies to provide residential treatment, specialized foster care placements and community programs to serve at-risk children and their families,” says President and CEO Scott Merritt. “We work with kids who might require residential treatment, but we try to keep them within their families or within their communities, with the right model of services, and we try to keep sibling groups together.”
The group offers medication management and psychiatric treatment, a GED program, a support group for LGBTQ kids, and art and equine therapy. “Horses just understand kids,” Merritt says. Last year, the organization served 194 kids, with 85 in residential care, 31 in transitional care, 13 in the Evolve program and 65 in foster care. Two are going to college this year.
Murphy-Harpst celebrates its centenary at the Piedmont Driving Club on September 19. 
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