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ABOUT US 

OUR STORY​

The Mullen-Polk Foundation reaches out across Washington State and the nation to help children who are the victims of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Our focus is to provide services for all children and families involved in the foster care system.


Our services include: recruitment, training, licensing, placement, case management and adoption services for our foster and adoptive

families. The Mullen-Polk Foundation provides our licensed foster and adoptive families with the training, tools, and compassionate support
needed, that gives each child in their care every chance to succeed. We are licensed by the State of Washington as a child placing agency for family foster care, therapeutic foster care, and adoptions.


Our priority will always be to provide the highest-quality care for the children placed in the homes of our foster and adoptive families.




OUR MISSION

The Mullen-Polk Foundation empowers foster youth to thrive through pathways of restorative care, community connection, programs, and services.

OUR VISION

Mullen-Polk Foundation will be the model of choice serving the growing number of foster youth in Southwest Washington.

OUR VALUES

Collaboration: Clients, Partners, Community

Access: Right, Universal Rights, Collaboration

Empowerment: Build on Self-Empowerment, Self-Determination, Leadership, Safe Space

Trauma Informed: Empathy, Compassion, Safety, Advocacy

Inclusion: Equity, Intersectionality, Social Justice

Relationships: Integrity, Diverse, Enduring

BEHAVIOR REHABILITATION SERVICES​

Behavior Rehabilitation Services (BRS) is a temporary intensive wraparound support and treatment program for youth with extreme, high-level service needs used to safely stabilize youth and assist in achieving a permanent plan or a less intensive service. These services can be provided in an array of settings and are intended to safely:


•Keep and/or return the youth to their own homes with wraparound supports to the family.

•Reunify or achieve alternative permanency more quickly.

•Increase family based care by using a wraparound approach.

•Reduce length of service by transitioning to a permanent resource or less intensive service.


Our job is to assist in reducing the youth’s negative behavior patterns, increase school participation, increase community awareness, locate long term placement and increase the youth’s overall potential to reach permanency. Another emphasis of the Mullen-Polk Foundation Child Placing Agency is to develop necessary supports which would allow the youth to maintain or develop a permanent family connection and to reside in his/her own community in an identified permanent resource.

OUR TEAM

Linda Weems

Executive Director & Founder

For over twenty years Ms. Weems has served as an advocate for individuals with behavioral and emotional diagnosis. Her vision for the Mullen-Polk Foundation, a non-profit, which she founded in 2015 for the unique purpose of assisting all youth in fulfilling their desires to live, work, and exercise their rights as productive citizens.  Ms. Weems was inspired at a young age, by the important belief that every human being had the inherent right to self-fulfillment.  The organization has an exceptional record for exceeding requirements to enhance the quality of service delivered throughout its programs.

Dante Jones

MULLEN-POLK FOUNDATION

Director of Operations

 

 A PNW native, born and raised across the river in Portland, OR. He has a history of working with youth in care going back to 1999 when he started as a Youth Mentor/Direct Care Staff for Janus Youth Programs in SE Portland, a role he stayed in until 2003.  After the birth of his 2nd child in 2003 he was looking for a change and decided to cut his teeth in Real Estate finance as a mortgage loan officer... around this same time his parents became licensed as Foster Parents and began caring for youth in their home. Seeing the opportunity to further give back to those in need Dante decided to become approved as a respite provider for his parents so that they would be able to take the necessary breaks Foster Parents often need.

 

In January 2020 Dante joined the Board of the MPF as the Treasurer and has been instrumental in the ongoing development of Our Next Generation 2, a 30 bed Staffed Residential Facility for BRS youth in Washington State. In the course of his participation on the Board and with the development project it was decided that Dante could best serve the needs of the MPF by joining the staff, and he was offered the position of Director of Operations in May 2022 and he accepted and joined the MPF in that capacity that same month.

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Joeal Hotchkins

MULLEN-POLK FOUNDATION

Case Manager / Licensor

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Alice Weems-Woods

MULLEN-POLK FOUNDATION

Finance and Operations Manager

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Katie Colon

OUR NEXT GENERATION

Program  Manager

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Katie joined ONG in May 2022, as direct care staff and achieved promotion within by bringing her experience and knowledge to the table. Katie moved from Hollywood, Florida to Vancouver, Washington in 2006 and has since run a childcare center, opened restaurants, and worked in a local high school.  Katie came to the Mullen Polk Foundation after working as a counselor at Green Hill School in a Juvenile Rehabilitation Center.

Katie comes with experienced trauma-informed care training, resistant youth training, suicide prevention, dialect behavioral therapy training, and de-escalation training. Katie has been able to transfer all these skills and experience to the Mullen Polk Foundation.

Katie brings her greatest strength of being a leader with the youth and staff, seeking out to provide stability and empathy for all. She provides great knowledge of cultural and diversity for staff and youth and prides herself on being able to connect with all the youth on their levels and meeting them “where they are at”.

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Margaret Wilkins

MULLEN-POLK FOUNDATION

Case Management Clinical Consultant 

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COMMUNITY SUPPORTERS

Battle Ground School District

Boy's & Girls Club (Vancouver, WA)

Catholic Community Services

Children's Home Society (Vancouver, WA)

Clark County Juvenile Probation

Clark County YMCA


Community Warehouse (Portland, OR)

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe

Education Services District 112

Evergreen School District

Family Solutions


GameStop (Vancouver, WA)

Hi-School Pharmacy (Vancouver, WA)

IQ Credit Union

Molina Healthcare

Portland Housing Center

SeaMar Community Health Centers (Van. WA)

The Truth about Drugs

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