Ken Kush, Residential Manager at Stevens
Ken Kush grew up around David City, Nebraska and hard work was in his blood early on.
“I decided I needed to work if I was going to have things for myself,” he said about his freshman through senior high school job working for Henningsen Foods.
After graduating, the work didn’t end for Kush. He immediately went to work at a Packing Plant in Schuyler, Nebraska.
Life’s paths shift for many reasons. Because Kush suffered from many bouts of bronchitis due to the cold climate at the packing plant, he ended up serving children.
“There was an ad running in the Grand Island Independent for a position at Teen Chance Group Home. They were looking for house parents,” he said. Funding for the program eventually ceased through time, but Kush’s desire to serve children did not end.
In October of 1984 he started working at Epworth Village, Inc.
“I started when Coleman was still a Group Home,” he said, noting that as a “House Parent,” “We did everything, the cooking and the laundry and we cooked for the people on staff.”
“Through the years, the Epworth Village, Inc. program has made drastic changes and has evolved,” he said. Kush said the program’s ability to evolve with the times, reflects its success, “Epworth Village, Inc. is nothing like it was 15 or 20 years ago. And, that is because we have kept up with the necessities of the times.”
For example he said, “Mental Health issues have become a lot bigger part of the treatment. The type of children we work with changes and that means coming up with new solutions to the problems and challenges we face.”
Kush said, socially, families have changed too.
“The identified family resource the children have today seems weaker than it used to be. Five or six years ago, more children could name an identified family resource, but now they may have none. That makes what we do more difficult. If a child coming to Epworth Village, Inc. is getting three meals a day and a roof over their head and this is a new experience for them, why would they want to leave? We have to give the children coping skills to survive in whatever kind of environment they are going back to,” he said.
Kush said the main reason he returns to work each day is to see both the small and large successes that happen in children’s lives. “There are so many successes,” he said. “But there was this one client that always sticks out to me. He came here and his issues were so intense. He was a very aggressive child who hated the world. When he left Epworth Village, Inc., he left totally in control of what he did, understanding what he did and had a plan to change his life.”
“No, it is not a job where you get immediate satisfaction or immediate success. Later on though, probably the most touching thing is when former clients come up and recognize who you are and what you did for them. . . . Children are our future. If we don’t change their lives now, what happens when they start making decisions as adults that will negatively affect their lives and ours too? We want to see children succeed.”