Our History
In 1971, the 4th Judicial District Court was offered a federal grant from the Montana Board of Crime Control to establish one of the first ever community-based group homes in 
Montana because of a pressing need for placement of adolescents. Chief Probation Officer Jeremiah Johnson empowered a local community group comprised mostly of church group members, school teachers and housewives to incorporate this new home. In February 1972, the board opened the District Youth Guidance Home as a seven-bed boys’ group fostering home. Live-in houseparents staffed the home and provided basic care and custody.
History Highlights:
• In November 1976, the corporation added an “attention home” to meet the crisis needs of adolescent status offenders and runaways. The 12-bed, coeducational home was also staffed by live-in houseparents, and an executive director was added to the staff.
• In 1978, the corporation added a third home, which was originally planned to be a girls' home. Instead it opened as a coeducational home, and the original boys' home added girls so that now all three homes served coeducational populations and were staffed with live-in houseparents.
• In June 1979, one of the homes became the Tom Roy Guidance Home to honor a supporter.
• In 1984 the needs of the children in care pushed the organization to provide intensive services and change its staffing patterns. One of the homes replaced its houseparents with shifting staff who worked 40 hours per weeks and provided 24-hour awake care and supervision.
• This new program was named in honor of Susan Talbot in 1985. The program was an instant success and showed the need for another similar home. The Tom Roy Home remained a houseparent program.
• In 1987, the fourth youth home, and the second Talbot Center, was added to the array of housing options and was the first youth home built for its unique needs.
• During the late 1980s, the organization changed its legal name from “District Youth Guidance Home, Inc.” to “Missoula Youth Homes” and moved all group homes from houseparent staffing to therapeutic youth worker staffing. Having replaced the houseparents, the organization then initiated a foster care program to provide youngsters with family placements when appropriate.
• As the 90s began, the state of Montana moved group home funding from foster care budgets to Medicaid. The impact would be tremendous over the next two decades.
• The foster care program grew to 20 placements, with more than half of those youngsters under the age of 11. This demonstrated the need for a group home for younger children who were required more care family foster care could provide. The Sherry Mahon Francetich Children’s Treatment Home was established as a four-bed treatment home for latent age children in 1994.
• At the request of the United Way of Flathead County, the organization established a home in Kalispell -- the first home established outside Missoula County. This new home was to be an emergency shelter much like the Missoula Attention Home.
• A Boy’s Treatment Home was added in 1997 to address the need to care for and treat sexual reactivity. The organization also added a second Francetich children’s treatment home with four beds in place. Finally, the foster care program was renamed in honor of Dan Fox, a long-time friend of Youth Homes and a 25-year veteran of child protective services.
• In 1999, the Youth Home was approached by the Executive Director of Intermountain Children’s Home about a joint venture to merge the expertise of the eventual two members.
• In 2002, the organization opened its third shelter, the seven-bed Bitterroot Attention Home in Hamilton.
• In 2004, the Youth Homes assisted InnerRoads with its Wilderness Treatment Program and assumed its operations in February 2005.
• In 2009 the Dan Fox Program was renamed to Dan Fox Family Care Program, to emphasize the work the staff does with birthfamilies.
• Today the Youth Homes operates the following services:
o Group Homes
o Shelter Care
o Therapeutic Family Care
o Learning Lab
o Wilderness Treatment
• We are developing a different view of how we “see” the Youth Homes as a “movement” of very distinct “companies” including the Partnership for Children.
In the past 39 years, the following changes have occurred:
o More than care
o Work is more clinical
o Kids are seen as disturbed more than misguided
o Movement to family placement
o Staff are more professional
o More agencies in the system – more statewide – less clear definitions