House of Providence offers safe, permanent home for foster children

Maggie, Jason Dunn create facility for foster children in their teen years

DETROIT – What makes a family? At House of Providence, it's a safe and permanent home for foster children who are most at risk -- the ones in their teenaged years.

"Once they are about 12, most likely they will never be adopted and they will age out," said Maggie Dunn. "The statistics are horrifying for kids that age out of the system."

To battle those statistics, Maggie and Jason Dunn created House of Providence in Detroit. Instead of bouncing teens from home to home, the beautiful facility is their home and loving volunteers spend time with them there.

"You know you are coming to invest into a young lady or a young boy that for them they've been abused and neglected and abandoned and rejected all of their life, and it is coming to add value into their life," said Jason Dunn.

Volunteers can tutor, teach, go on social trips or just hang out. Meanwhile, the teens live there together and get a top-notch education through the Oxford school district. More important, they get a sense of finally belonging somewhere.

"I know children who, by the time they were 4, have already been in eight homes," said Maggie Dunn. "That reinforces, 'You are the problem, you are the problem, you are the problem,' and it is constant rejection."

For now, House of Providence will take care of 15 teenage girls. Eventually the Dunns plan to expand to boys, with one goal in mind.

"That every child who has left here has a family. No child ages out and is alone on the planet. That's not OK," said Maggie Dunn.

What makes a family? At House of Providence, it starts with love. Jay and Maggie Dunn are showing that love every day to our most at-risk kids in the heart of Detroit.

Heart of Detroit