Area agencies and Mountain Top Boys’ Home are building community support to help more area boys rise above their troubled pasts.

Agencies from Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties —including law enforcement, the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS), Lookout Mountain Community Services and Family Connection — have banded together with the Mountain Top Boys Home board of directors to seek funding to build a home on Mountain Top’s grounds in Villanow.

The home would serve eight to 10 troubled boys between ages 11 and 17. Gordon County agencies are mulling the possibility of joining the partnership and have expressed support for the home, said Brenda Taylor, director of Dade County Department of Family and Children Services.

“It appears the group home is something that will become a reality,” Taylor said, adding the agencies involved are “begging” for the public’s input and support.

A public hearing will be held this month in each county to be served by the proposed home. Olney Meadows, senior planner for Coosa Valley Regional Development Center, and a DFCS representative and one from Mountain Top’s board will attend the meetings to educate the public about the plans, to explain the grant application process, to spell out how a boys’ home serves the community and to solicit the community’s backing in the venture.

Meadows is compiling statistics from the four counties to include with the application for a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant to fund construction of the facility, which will contain 5,000 square feet and a 2,600 square-foot basement.

The application must be filed by April 1, and award announcements will be announced in June, she said. If the grant is approved, Mountain Top will match it with $50,000.

Based on the involvement of so many agencies, the partnership, local need and a letter of support from the state Department of Human Resources, Meadows believes the group will secure the funding.

Plans for the youth have been on the drawing board for the past two years as the WACADACHA Youth Task Force, which serves Walker, Dade, Catoosa and Chattooga counties, explored the possibility of building and administering a home or finding an organization already administering a children’s home to administer another one, Taylor said.

Taylor, who also serves as the task force’s chairman, said the task force will advise Mountain Top’s board, which is not local.

The four counties have a “greater need” now to serve troubled boys, but a home for girls is also needed, she said. The facility will serve boys from those counties.

Current plans are for the new home to serve youths under DFCS jurisdiction, but may expand to serve boys under the DJJ, Taylor said.

More on Mountain Top

“Our goal is to increase the board’s involvement to this area,” said Alton Conway, Mountain Top board member. “For us to be successful, we’ve got to (work with) local (youths).”

“If we do this right, we’re going to be successful,” Conway said.

Mountain Top needs the community’s support to achieve its mission of helping troubled boys and their families so the youths may return home and grow to be productive members of the community, Conway said. Mountain Top has operated a long-term home, where children typically stay six to nine months, for more than 20 years.

Mountain Top provides boys, who have been adjudicated by the courts and range from age 14 to 18, with an education and social nurturing.

Utilizing a converted forest ranger’s residence built in the 1960s, Mountain Top was established in 1980. The home sits on 488 acres of land surrounded by the Chattahoochee National Forest and 65 miles of hiking trails, according to Mountain Top officials.

The land for the home is leased from the United Methodist Church, one of the facility’s sponsors, for $1 annually, Conway said.

The boys’ lodging, which consists of one structure, has a kitchen, television room and recreation room. A new building is under construction to replace this one, Conway said.

In 1999, a school building was completed. A wood shop was completed, the equipment updated and a vocational program installed the following year, he said.

The home receives about $130,000 to $140,000 from the state and usually about $20,000 from the Methodist church, as well as additional funding from community club fundraisers and individual contributions, Mountain Top officials said