Finding a Mission Working with Medically Fragile Children
Tessa Raby talks about her experience working as Support Staff at A Rosie Place for Children

Tell us what you do here at A Rosie Place for Children?
I’ve known Tieal Bishop for a few years, but I didn’t know what A Rosie Place was until probably last year, which is crazy. I started out with housekeeping and now I’m also part of the support staff. I always wanted to work with the kids when I started here but I had other jobs. I ended up switching my life around so that I could work here more. I’ve worked in a day care, I’ve done substitute teaching, so I’ve been around kids a lot. It just takes a little while to get comfortable.
I find that a lot of people don’t know what we do here. I try to talk about it as much as I can and spread the word!
What do you love about this job?
It’s so hard to put into words! I love working at A Rosie Place because I love everything that this place is about. I have met so many amazing children that I never would have met if I didn’t work here.
So many parents don’t get the help they need. The longer I work here, the more I realize the struggles that they go through constantly in their daily life. To have A Rosie Place for Children as a gift for them where they don’t even have to pay and the kids can come in and have fun and the parents can spend time with the rest of their family. It’s the coolest ever. And it’s the only place that does this in Northern Indiana.
What is different about this job from other jobs you have had?
I like to feel accomplished at the end of the day, to feel like I helped someone or something. When I get the smiles and the excitement and hugs and laughter from these children, there’s no better feeling knowing that although they’re away from their family and everything that they know, they know that they’re safe with us and they feel the love and then we feel the love and it’s just such an amazing feeling I go home every time I work feeling accomplished.
They want to be loved, they want to laugh, they want to play. They just want to have fun and be a kid.
I love playing Just Dance with them. We have a boy who comes that always wants to play. There’s only one controller so we don’t have to keep score. I like doing crafts, I like to get messy, and just being silly and making them laugh. That’s what I like to do. I try to read to them sometimes, but they usually want to just run around and play.
One of the things that’s unique here is the age range we work with. We had a teenage girl stay with us a couple weeks back. I asked her, what do you want to do, want to play a game? And she said, just hang out. So we hung out and played music and talked, girl talk. It was hanging out. That’s my job, to hang out with these guys.
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