HALF A CENTURY DEVOTED TO FINDING CHILDREN SAFE AND LOVING HOMES
Since 1966, Childplace has had a passion for one predominant purpose: serving at-risk children. Childplace has dedicated years to meeting the needs of our community’s vulnerable generations. Now because of that fierce resolve, multiple treatment options are available for abandoned, abused, as well as neglected children and adolescents — scared kids and teens who simply needed more help than was being offered.
The initiative has made a wonderful difference in the lives of more than 2,000 children and adolescents, who have now found residential care. Additionally, nearly 350 children have now been placed into adoptive homes. Childplace has generated countless new life-changing opportunities for connection, nurtured in a spirit of Christian love and counsel. Committed to making a difference, Childplace has imparted thousands of hours to individuals and families.
This noble endeavor started as just a spark of hope, when the members of Northside Church of Christ in Jeffersonville, IN came together with a desire to see homeless boys and girls know the warmth of new homes. Their dream found a voice on March 7, 1966, when Indiana granted the legal papers necessary to get to work. Childplace’s original Board consisted of Northside elders with 13 area church leaders becoming the agency’s first strategic decision-makers. Guiding the Steering Committee forward, an additional group of 75 filled a Development Committee to fundraise for this non-profit organization. With the help of the Northside Church’s community, this dream could get off the ground running.
Sparks of hope ignited a profound reality on May 18, 1967, when the organization placed its first child into foster care. From that fateful day forward, Childplace has been responsible for fostering more than 1,700 children at-risk and in need, as well as placing over 300 children up for adoption. As the decades pass, Chlidplace's mission has never wavered. The company's ability to nurture professional, best-in-class treatment services has pressed ahead with abundance.
The agency’s campus has grown as big as its leaders’ dream: 22 acres housing a central administration building, a counseling center, four therapeutic group homes, a resource and learning center, and a maternity/transitional living cottage; all of of which testify to just how far Childplace’s initial ambitions have culminated. Across two residential treatment campuses, Childplace employs more than 100 staff members: from a full-time psychiatrist, to various clinicians with master’s-level degrees, offering training with invaluable resources to clients, particularly sensitive to the ways abuse and trauma can impact developing roots. The agency has dedicated every church donation, loan, grant, charitable donation, and bequest to magnanimous use.
APPLYING HUMAN CONCEPTS TO CREATE INSPIRED DESIGN
Motivated to adapt to the digital era, Childplace turned to Hatfield Media. We saw an agency that wanted to open its online presence to a broader modern-day audience, in an effort to make anyone visiting the site feel closer to discovering ways to help and seek help.
Hatfield Media prioritizes customer satisfaction, which gave our team a well-grounded understanding of how to make this site design stronger. We knew it was central to capture Childplace as who they are: an agency created to hear an outcry of need. A welcoming website design would better give this agency the means to help young individuals restore a sense of home.
It felt like a moment of poignant synergy when Childplace sought out our team for a powerful website redesign, as Front-End Developer, Matt Swanberg notes, “At Hatfield Media, we take a human-centered approach to our work—whenever a project like this comes through the pipeline, every individual takes special care to ensure that we apply our individual areas of expertise.” Swanberg explains that we work to thoughtfully keep a single-minded focus as we push “to ensure that our client’s message has the furthest possible impact.”
Swanberg underscores three service areas our team highlighted on Childplace’s website: Adoption, Foster Care, and Counseling. Both our Graphic Design as well as Web Development teams joined forces to build “a site structure that would have the appropriate organizing principles without confusing the end-user or creating an unnecessary silo for site navigation.” The end “result lands a beautiful, mobile-first design that highlights distinct service areas while still allowing the entire site to be fully navigable from the main menu,” Swanberg says. Moreover, it felt fulfilling to have had “the opportunity to perform work for an organization that has a tremendous impact on our region.”
Hatfield Media’s Lead Front-End Developer, Steve Clark, knew it would take “a collaborative team effort to execute the clear vision” Childplace had “in mind for how the revamped website would need to work.” Pooling our brightest minds to carry out “focused and detailed work to fulfill the company’s vision,” Clark strived to “deliver an ultimately user-friendly site.” When aligning passionate ideas and missions, “we struck a solid balance,” Clark adds, finding “harmony between what Childplace needed and what we felt confidently would give both the client and users the best possible experience.”
ADOPTING A NEW LOGO: THE VOICE OF AN EMPATHETIC MISSION
Our Graphic Design team recognized the logo project would present a rewarding “challenge: not just to communicate Childplace’s identity through an understated, emotionally resonant mark, but also to carry forward an accomplished legacy.” After all, Childplace offers remarkable services, leading delicate conversations with respect, grace, and compassion. For an influential agency and brand like Childplace, Hatfield Media sought to reveal this multifaceted expertise through “a color palette that inspires feelings of safety to users and speaks to the company’s sense of responsibility.”
User-intuitive web design is one important way to give Childplace’s clients, who have experienced much difficulty, access to care with the greatest of ease. A website should never be frustrating or confusing to use, and ensuring that it's easy to navigate is one of many ways to provide incredible care. Hatfield Media’s design team left no stone unturned, prioritizing a user’s ease to discover crucial information as swiftly as possible through streamlined navigation. Our designers were only satisfied when the color choices of the logo and website at last could “set a professional tone to convey genuine comfort;” creating a sentiment of open arms for those searching. We knew this logo filled its big shoes: expressing Childplace’s loving spirit.
AN ELEGANT SITE FOR MAKING A DIFFERENCE, ONE HOME AT A TIME
Brian Davis, COO at Childplace, Inc. felt the partnership was strong with Hatfield Media on “Childplace’s rebranding and web-development efforts.” Considering that this agency offers “a diversity of services,” Davis explains it’s pivotal to be able to “connect with a wide spectrum of individuals.”
Molding this site to perfectly complement Childplace's vision proved to be a valuable asset. Davis greatly appreciates how our team effort achieved "an attractive, user-friendly site that is easy to navigate;” a website where “people can quickly locate the specific information they’re seeking.” The results reverberated instantly. “With Hatfield’s focus on building a site that generates views organically, Childplace noticed an almost immediate increase in site traffic,” Davis highlights. This, of course, translates on a much larger scale: more at-risk children and adolescents coming to find adoptive parents, accessing the care and treatment they so justly deserve.
We enjoy the impact of an engaging website’s new life. As the agency helps to heal the world, we know our work can give Childplace further means to fulfill its dream. This is what makes every challenge, every nuance, every balance achieved in building up a brand to its truest potential wholeheartedly worth it.
“The Hatfield Team is down to earth and on trend, but extremely professional and attentive to clients’ needs, ideas, and vision; helping to enhance Childplace’s marketing efforts beyond what was expected or envisioned. We see a long-term relationship with Hatfield,” adds Davis.
We would never want to box a multifaceted organization like Childplace into one small corner. Commanding a bolstered new website design, Childplace is now equipped to outreach to communities in need, and bring children and adolescents something quite rare: the hope of a new start.
