Marland’s Place has recently acquired a new CEO in the form of Ginarie Harrington. Harrington started working with Marland’s Place on March 30 of this year, but has only recently moved to the area.

Previously, she was the vice president of programs at Circle of Care, the largest foster care agency in Oklahoma. Her responsibilities there included overseeing all foster care programs across the state including foster care, transitional housing, transition living for youth that aged out of foster care, trial reunification for single mothers at Pearl’s Hope, outpatient mental health counseling, and launched Parent to Parent.

Harrington is a licensed clinical social worker, and is a therapist by trade. She is also a foster adoptive parent since 2012 and has fostered 22 children since 2012.

“I live this work, and I enjoy and work in this work,” said Harrington.

Harrington knew of Marland’s Place from working with previous CEO, Jaime Philips, in an organization called OK Care.

“My next career move was to advance the from VP of programs to a CEO/presidency position,” said Harrington. “This just happened to be open and someone tagged me on the position online… and so I prayed about it and thought ‘I don’t know, I guess I’ll give it a thought and see’, I did and now I’m here.”

Harrington was looking forward to focusing on one program, and she described foster care as her biggest passion.

“Being a clinician, and being a foster parent, and an adoptive parent for kids from hard places with trauma. I see the need of foster parents, and I see the need to be able to support families well that are saying ‘yes’ and taking kids from hard places,” said Harrington. “For me, Marland’s Place is all of those things. Marland’s Place is in a small community, and I’m about to raise three young children. I’m looking forward to setting roots in a small, rural community and growing my family in that area. So Marland’s Place is a piece of that, as well as one program that I’m most passionate about in life. Marland’s Place drew me in, in the sense of it being small, and there are lots of opportunities to grow. So it is a challenge too because it is small. There’s many things that we have the opportunity to do for our community, as well as for our families and kids in Kay County. I would love to see Marland’s Place grow and be the best foster care agency in rural Oklahoma that can serve families well.”

As CEO, Harrington responsibilities include overseeing the foster care program, hiring, financials, accounting, licensing, contract audits, helping certify foster families, supporting the Marland’s Place team, seeing families, on-call for crises, amongst other responsibilities.

Harrington finds the tradition to CEO as a great learning opportunity.

“For me, I love to grow and learn, and so there are lots of things in this position,” said Harrington. “Coming from an agency where I had 52 staff under me, and coming to an agency where there is four staff and being the ‘jack of all trades’, being responsible for all of the things, it is a great opportunity to grow and learn. I am learning a lot.”

Harrington shared that there is a need for fosters as there are approximately 6800 children in the system in Oklahoma.

“I think that, one, we’re all called to help the vulnerable youth and the orphans, and the widows. Everyone can do something. Not everyone is called to bring in a child into their home, not everyone is equipped to do that, and not everybody feels like they are able and capable of do that,” said Harrington. “But I do feel that every single human being is called to do something. And if that means they come and volunteer with Marland’s Place sorting clothes and getting our clothes set up for the foster parents, or if that means volunteering to mow someone’s lawn, or bring them dinner when they take placement. I think the biggest need is that Oklahoma currently has around 6800 kids in care. For me, the need is so great in Oklahoma for foster parents, that we have kids in shelters and group homes sleeping in DHS offices on the floor because there are not homes that can say yes. You can be proactive and get certified to provide short term emergency placement, which is a huge need right now.”

Harrington noted that she and her family still keep up with the children they fostered, and made sure that they showed love to not only the foster child, but that child’s biological family as well.

“We still have connections to every single child that has been in our home. We’ve been able to keep that connection and see them grow up. We’ve always fostered to foster the family. My husband and I, and my biological children, have always had the perspective of: we know we’re called to do this, and if we’re going to do it, we do it well, and we are going to love the whole family and not just the kid. So for us, we loved on those biological parents,” said Harrington. “We were highly involved trying to help them, support them, encourage them, pray with them, help them to see their kids on extra visits and helping them navigate the system. And mentoring them to show what a healthy marriage looks like, and what a healthy family unit could look like. And sometimes that even involved bringing them into our home and having dinner with them, and celebrations and birthdays with their kids in our home. Sometimes families aren’t safe or appropriate in the beginning, and so it took time to build that trust and get to that point. But for us, we really did foster the entire family.”

Harrington and her family strove to make sure siblings could stay together whenever possible, and keep them in contact.

Harrington hopes that Marland’s Place can become a central hub for children and families in care within Kay County. Whether through counseling, speech therapy, a crisis nursery, and more for foster parents that take in emergency placements.

“I would love to see our foster care program grow and be able to offer supports. Whether that’s support groups, child care, respite care, meals. Just get togethers with other foster parents in the community that are not only Marland’s foster families, but all foster families having a centralized placed to get together,” said Harrington. “I have lots of ideas and lots of things I am hopeful for. For me, it really is about quality homes, not quantity homes. I really want quality, safe families to be able to say ‘yes’ and take care of kids. Because kids’ safety is the most important thing.”

For more information on Marland’s Place, or learning how to become a foster parents, visit www.marlandsplace.com.