Getting Better. Together.

OUR MISSION

The mission of Open Doors is to empower families and individuals to overcome abuse and poverty to attain self-reliance.

OUR VISION

At Open Doors, we’re aiming to shape communities to be free of poverty and abuse, eventually reaching full autonomy and rendering our services unneeded.

A GOAL FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

For 2019, Open Doors provided over 10,000 individuals with anti-poverty and strengthening family’s services. Open Doors has been a proud member of the Davis County Community since 1982. Our vision is to eradicate abuse and poverty in Davis County. Over the past 10 years, Open Doors has intentionally shifted more resources, staffing and funding toward self-sufficiency outcomes. Transforming our community so that vulnerable families thrive.

In 1982 a little white house was being used as a respite care nursery. Due to the ever-growing needs of low-income families in Clearfield, the nursery expanded into a small food bank then growing into storage units behind the house. The nursery moved to our current location and our food bank kept expanding until we purchased our Community Action Building located at 875 East Hwy. 193 in Layton.

Since we began serving low-income families, we took on the Community Action philosophy of helping people overcome poverty, not just by giving them food or clothing, but by helping them see the people they are and how important they are to our community. From one small program in 1982, Open Doors has grown into our Family Support Program with the mission of child abuse prevention through strengthening families and our Community Action Programs to help families overcome the barriers of poverty. Our programs include food bank, homeless prevention, Emergency Assistance, Self-Sufficiency Program, Circles Davis County, Toys for Tots, VITA Tax preparation, Crisis/respite Nursery and Parent Education.

Open Doors Social Services is a non-profit agency with a mission to empower individuals and families to overcome abuse and poverty, and to attain self-reliance.

Open Doors has three major programs and several other support services.

Our three major programs are:

• Circles
• Community Action
• Family Support

Circles is an initiative that builds communities to end poverty. Circles utilizes middle-income and higher-income volunteer who serve as allies to low-income families, providing support, encouragement, and personal experiences to help people experiencing poverty achieve self-sufficiency. It is an intensive program requiring families to make a strong commitment to participate in weekly group meetings, goal-setting, and accountability check-ins. Almost every low-income family who joins our Circles program experiences increases in income. And many of our Circles families in Davis County have experienced great successes in starting their own business, buying a home, getting off public assistance, and obtaining a living-wage job.

Community Action assists people who have low incomes to achieve economic stability and security and works to build communities in which all people have the opportunity to thrive. It sounds a lot like Circles, but includes a broader range of specific services and is generally doesn’t require the intense commitment that Circles families make. Community Action programs and services include self-sufficiency case management (to help people find employment), crisis prevention (to provide one-time rent/utility assistance in emergencies), rapid re-housing (to place homeless individuals and families in safe housing), food bank (to supplement nutrition), Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (to provide free tax preparation), and Sub-for-Santa and Toys-for-Tots (to provide gift assistance during the holidays). In all of the services we provide, our goal is to offer a hand up, not just a hand-out.

Family Support provides a crisis respite nursery for those times when parents have no one to turn to for childcare during stress, emergencies, or self-help appointments. Parents can bring their children to our nursery which provides a safe, nurturing environment. We serve children up to age 11 years old for up to three hours of scheduled care. During emergencies, we provide overnight care. Regardless of how much we love and care about our children, we all find ourselves, at times, in a position where we need help and don’t know where to turn. The crisis respite nursery at Open Doors is here to help at those times. Most parents report that after using our nursery services, their stress has decreased, and their family relationships have improved.

Open Doors has many opportunities for volunteers in our community to help make a difference: in addition to long term commitments like becoming an ally in our Circles initiative, we have one-time service opportunities for individuals, families, and groups, and many volunteers return on a routine basis to continue helping people and assist us in our vision to eradicate abuse and poverty one person or one family at a time.