Watson Children's Shelter

The Shelter was founded in 1977 and provides Shelter in a safe, nurturing home to Montana children, infant to age 14, who have experienced physical or sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, or family crisis. The Shelter provides a nurturing environment through the operation of two homes and is licensed under the regulations of the montanadepartment of public health and human services quality assurance division. The homes welcome over 100 children annually and can welcome up to 16 children at one home and 12 children at the other home. Both homes are beautifully designed and provide a safe, welcoming, homelike atmosphere. The Shelter accepts referrals and placements from Montana division of child and family services, tribal social services, mental health centers, youth courts and private referrals. The Shelter lead staff hold master's and bachelor's level degrees and all staff complete over 30 hours of annual training to effectively care for children from traumatic experiences.

The healthy foundations home visiting program began in march of 2018, and is designed to work with at-risk families that present with various high- risk factors that are shown to be directly correlated to child abuse and neglect. Services are provided in the families' homes and can occur multiple times each week or as infrequent as once per month. The program accepts referrals from many sources throughout the community. Eligible families must be pregnant or within the first 90 days after the birth of a child. Healthy foundations has capacity for 30-40 families at any given time depending on the frequency of home visits required for each family. Funding for healthy foundations comes from fundraising events, grants, corporate and individual donors.