Center receives $50,000 donation

ELKINS -- Youth Health Services' Family Support Center in Randolph County received a sizable donation Wednesday when Aetna Better Health of West Virginia presented the organization with a check for $50,000.

Aetna, one of the country's leading health care organizations, supplied a donation not only to the Family Support Center in Elkins, but to other FSC's around the state of West Virginia.

"Aetna reached out to the West Virginia Association of Family Support Centers and informed them that they had a sum of money that they were wanting to donate to all FSCs in West Virginia," YHS Family Support Center Director Rosa Plaugher told The Inter-Mountain Wednesday.

"They figured out how many Family Support Centers there were in the state and then divided it equally between all of us… We are very thankful to Aetna for their donation."

The Family Support Center, which is located on the Beverly Five-Lane in a shopping plaza next to the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance Benefits Office, offers many different services to local families.

"We have four functioning pantries," Plaugher said. "We have the food pantry, the hygiene pantry, the household pantry, and the baby pantry. All of our services are appointment based and are available once a month to families.

"We also offer parent education courses and we have four different parenting education classes available at our office, as well as a parent support group called 'Coffee with Caregivers' that is for anyone who has a child 18 years old or younger."  

Plaugher said the donation funds will be used by the Family Support Center in various ways. 

"We plan on using the money from the donation to provide more supplies for families," Plaugher said. "We also want to be able to use some of it for our community events and to offer more activities during those events. We want to use some of it for marketing strategies to promote the Center a little bit more, and to build up the supplies we need in case there's an emergency situation for families and we need to help them out."

The Family Support Center was formerly located at Youth Health Service's main building on Harrison Avenue.

"We have been in our new location for about 2 1/2 years," said Plaugher. "We originally started at Youth Health, but as the Family Support Center continued to grow, it needed a space of its own to provide all of our services."

For more information about the Family Support Center, call 304-591-4052.