Last month, Benchmarks North Carolina celebrated another year at our Annual Dinner and Conference. While there was much to celebrate, Benchmarks had the bitter sweet privilege of honoring and saying farewell to long time member and child and family advocate Margie Christopher, Executive Director of Children’s Homes of Cleveland County (CHCC).
This year’s annual meeting was the last in which long time Benchmarks member and innovative thinker Margie Christopher will have been in attendance. Margie will begin enjoying her journey into retirement beginning in January as the agency moves into their new facility—expanding services for children and transitional age youth—which has been Margie’s vision for the future of CHCC for years.
As many in the Cleveland County community will tell you, Margie is synonymous with CHCC. Margie began working at Children’s Homes of Cleveland County in 1987. Since then, Margie has been instrumental in the agencies mission to provide high quality, holistic care to the Cleveland community. With the realization that quality care should not be simply reserved to the children and families at CHCC, the agency, with the direction of its ED, expanded its services to include a visiting program, contracts with the local Department of Social Services, and evidence-based and evidence-informed outpatient services.
Margie is a visonary that has done exactly what she set out to do, which is helping children and families. In her closing remarks during our meeting this year where Margie was recognized she left us with a final thought. “A lot has changed since 1987, but what hasn’t is that it is still about kids…and it is still about families.”
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