photo by: Chansi Long/Journal-World photo

Gina Meier-Hummel stands in front of a barn at the O'Connell Youth Ranch on Oct. 8, 2021. The nonprofit organization is merging with fellow Lawrence nonprofit The Children's Shelter. The new organization, which will continue to operate at the ranch on the east edge of Lawerence in addition to other shelter locations across town, will be renamed the O'Connell Children's Shelter when the merger becomes official in November.

Two longtime Lawrence-based organizations that provide housing and other services to children in need are merging.

The Children’s Shelter and the O’Connell Youth Ranch have agreed to become one entity, both groups told the Journal-World. For the past year, board members from both agencies have been mulling over the decision, and they plan to make it official on Nov. 1.

Moving forward, the Children’s Shelter and O’Connell Youth Ranch will provide services as the O’Connell Children’s Shelter Inc. once the merger is official. Gina Meier-Hummel, current executive director of the O’Connell Youth Ranch and a former executive director for the Children’s Shelter, will become the executive director for the O’Connell Children’s Shelter.

“Both organizations are great in and of themselves in terms of what they offer to families,” said Meier-Hummel. “We are excited about making a difference and really being able to do that in a bigger way.”

O’Connell Youth Ranch — located on the eastern edge of Lawrence off O’Connell Road — is celebrating its 45th year in existence this year. Erected in February of 1976 from a 120-acre land donation from Elsie O’Connell, the ranch has served thousands of young men. In the early 1980s, however, its resources were stretched and some local children were going to have to be relocated to neighboring communities.

“At that time, they were worried that local youth were going to have to be placed outside of our community,” Meier-Hummel said. “So the Children’s Shelter stepped up and said we need to figure out how to make sure there’s an option for kids to stay local. Now it’s a great resource for not only our community, but also our state. Combined we’ll have five residential homes to help take care of kids in foster care.”

The Children’s Shelter serves both boys and girls, while the O’Connell Youth Ranch serves only boys. Girls will be able to use the farmland at the ranch to fish, ride horses, and ride bikes, but only boys can live in one of the three residential houses on the ranch.

“At this point in time we’ll continue to evaluate needs, but we’re not planning to have young ladies come out (to sleep at the ranch),” Meier-Hummel said. “We are continuing to have houses as they currently are.”

Though girls will not be living at the ranch, they will have access to its resources.

“We have animals out here, we have walking paths out here, we have bikes and places where children can safely ride,” Meier-Hummel said. “If children from the Children’s Shelter need to just get away and get out in the country, they’ll be able to come out and use some of the resources we have here. It’s great to have kids be able to ride bikes or fish in the pond. So there are things like that we can utilize to help the kids be kids.”

Another shared resource that will benefit the new agency is the Children’s Shelter’s ability to provide emergency shelter to children who are placed in foster care in the middle of the night. O’Connell Youth Ranch has not provided emergency shelter relief to children before.

The two organizations have long had similar missions. According to its online outreach, O’Connell Youth Ranch serves boys primarily from 6 to 18 years old and prepares them for a number of situations, including foster care, adoption, reintegration with their families, or providing them skills to support themselves as adults.

The Children’s Shelter, which operates at various locations around the community, primarily serves boys and girls 10 to 18 years old, according to its website. The children generally are placed with the organization via a court due to abuse, neglect or other law enforcement-related issues. The organization also has active programs related to prevention, crisis intervention, and family case management, among others.

Longtime Children’s Shelter board member Wint Winter Jr. says the merger will enable the agency to help more children.

“In our recent times, there are many more children in more desperate need of care,” Winter said. “Society’s problems today create more severe demands for help. Lawrence now has a much more powerful single group working together to address these critical challenges of our children and families. Lawrence and northeast Kansas now have one agency (with) twice the financial and human resources of any past single agency.”

The O’Connell Children’s Shelter will not eliminate any jobs, but now administrators and volunteers will work at both locations, the organizations said.

They also will no longer need to compete for the same grants and donors. Board president of the O’Connell Youth Ranch John Rathbun is enthusiastic about the merger and believes the community will benefit from this decision.

“The staff of both agencies will each combine their unique skill sets to provide the services necessary to serve the needs of the young men and women we seek to serve,” Rathbun said. “The Lawrence community is blessed to have these two agencies join forces to combine their energy and resources under the expert direction of Executive Director Gina Meier-Hummel.”

Meier-Hummel began serving as executive director over both agencies on Friday, although the two organizations won’t officially become one until next month.