Catoosa County Family Collaborative held its annual planning retreat at The Colonnade on Jan. 22.

“We looked at things that had been accomplished in the previous year with expectations for the next year,” said Jane Everett, coordinator.

Community leaders from area government agencies, churches, schools and other civic and/or non-profit organizations met to identify the needs of area children and families, set goals to satisfy those needs and strategize to implement plans to meet those goals.

Some of the Collaborative’s many goals are:

* No child will wake up hungry

* Every child will feel loved

* No child will wonder what is going to happen next

* Every school will have its own social worker

* Catoosa will have a violence free community

* More foster parents will be available

* Every child will be immunized by age 2

* A nurse will work in every school

* Catoosa will have less teen pregnancy

* Young people will come to school ready to learn

* The needs of families will benefit with more community involvement

Goal committees narrowed the Collaborative’s mission down to five simple mantras:

1) All children will succeed in school.

2) All children will graduate on time.

3) All children will be healthy from birth.

4) All families will be free from violence and abuse.

5) All moms giving birth for the first time will have at least a GED, general education development or a high school diploma.

Committees will work to accomplish some of these priorities in the coming year.

“The school committee chose full-time school nurses and social workers for every school, summer services and drivers education as priorities,” Everett said.

She said that since schools are community-based, afterschool programs are needed through the summer for unsupervised children.

The health committee will push to increase pre-natal information availability, improve pre-natal care and start enrollment clinics for the state’s Peach Care program and a dental clinic for indigent care.

The violence committee wants to start a Catoosa resource line where with one phone call a victim of violence or a person who needs help with serious, life-altering issues can get in touch with all the resources Catoosa has to offer.

“It would be like a help line, where anybody could call and find out what they needed,” she said. “Gordon County already has one.”

The violence committee also sees as a priority the establishment of a family court and/or a full-time juvenile court. Members also want to see more foster families with more support, such as better services and mentoring for foster children, as well as better support for domestic violence prevention.

“The important part is that this is a long range plan developed by a cross section of the entire community,” Everett said. “It is a community plan, not a Family Collaborative plan. Now, the committees will go out and figure out ways to make these things happen.