In just a few days at ACH’s Youth Emergency Shelter, Sayde experienced something she’d never known before:
Safety, stability, and the freedom to be a child.
At an age when most children were worrying about homework or clothes, Sayde was listening for footsteps in the house. She knew the sound of anger before it arrived, learned how to stay quiet to stay safe, and carried responsibilities far heavier than her years. As a child, she moved through the world alert and guarded, as both of her parents were addicted to drugs and physically and mentally abusive.
By the time she was 13 years old, Sayde had learned to take care of herself, as well as her 4-year-old brother. What she had never learned was what it felt like to simply be a kid.
That changed briefly but profoundly when she arrived at ACH’s Youth Emergency Shelter.
Sayde came to ACH on her first day of 8th grade. Child Protective Services picked her up from school, brought her to their office while they searched for a safe place to stay, and determined ACH was the safest, most stable respite. Her brother was able to be placed with a kinship caregiver who – for unknown/undisclosed reasons – could care for him but not Sayde.
So, Sayde arrived at ACH’s Pat O’Neal Youth Emergency Shelter scared and exhausted, without her brother, her new outfit for 8th grade as the only belongings to her name.
What she found at ACH was something entirely new: calm.
“At ACH, I didn’t have to worry,” Sayde says. “For the first time, there were adults who were watching out for me, and I didn’t have to carry everything by myself.”
Safety in the Small Moments
Her stay was short, just a handful of days, but the impact was lasting. Staff welcomed her without judgment. They helped her find clothes that fit. They introduced routines, such as chores, mealtimes, schoolwork, and bedtime. Ordinary things that, for Sayde, felt special. She’d never had a parent set those expectations. At the shelter, adults responded instead of reacting. Rules existed, but so did kindness. When kids struggled, staff didn’t yell or hide in their bedroom doing drugs. They helped.
Most importantly, ACH let Sayde be a child.
She remembers doing schoolwork on a computer, trying new foods she’d never tasted before, and sitting at a table with other kids who, like her, carried heavy stories. When she was able to mentally process the emotional weight and toll of what was happening, she cried. But no one punished her or turned away. She says she remembers staff validating her feelings, and just “being there and letting her cry.”
“That was the only place in my childhood where I truly felt safe,” she says. “They treated me like I mattered. Like I was their kid, too.”
After leaving ACH, Sayde’s life remained difficult, but the experience at ACH stayed with her.
An Impact That Endured
Today, Sayde is a college graduate, a homeowner, a wife, and a mother. She is pursuing a master’s degree and raising her son with the stability and love she never had. When asked what motivates her, she doesn’t hesitate: she refuses to repeat the past.
And she never forgot the place that helped her survive it.
When given the opportunity to support an organization during the holidays, Sayde chose ACH without question. “In the hardest moment of my life,” she says, “ACH gave me something no one else did—the chance to just be a kid.”
About the Youth Emergency Shelter
The Pat O’Neal Youth Emergency Shelter (YES) is the only 24-hour emergency shelter in Tarrant County offering 24/7 safe shelter to runaway and homeless youth, and trafficking survivors, ages 5-17. ACH works to reunite them with their families or find safe and stable alternative living arrangements. The program provides outreach, education, advocacy, counseling, and case management services for foster care and community youth who are experiencing family crisis, family conflict, or homelessness. With an average cost per child of $425 per night, the Shelter is facing a projected funding gap of $649,468. We welcome all gifts, large and small, that help give children safety, hope, and love.