We made remarkable strides in 2024. We revamped our Spiritual Life program, expanded Growing Teens for Life, launched a new satellite location for Family Services, and began offering Intensive Foster Care services. Additionally, our CarePortal program saw significant growth, we planted over 30,000 trees on our Wabash campus, and we relocated and enhanced our Clinical Services department. This is only a partial list of our achievements. Moving forward, our aim is to sustain this momentum and continue expanding and improving the services we provide.
In 2025, we celebrate 175 years of enriching the lives of children and families throughout Indiana through emotional healing, personal development, and spiritual growth. As we continue walking alongside children and families, we believe in new possibilities for their futures, made possible through hope found in Christ. Daily, we witness lives changed—families reunited, the broken healed, and the lost coming to Christ.
From the depths of my heart, thank you. Thank you for joining us in this mission, and for allowing me the privilege of being part of this incredible team. I am deeply honored to be part of the longstanding legacy of Josiah White’s.
Matthew Purkey, President & CEO
Our Impact in 2024
Program Updates
Clinical Services
In an effort to best serve our students in residential treatment, Josiah White’s moved our Clinical Services department to a new building on the south end of campus in the fall of 2024.
“The new Clinical Services building provides more therapeutic spaces in one unified space,” said Jessica Lacey, Director of Clinical Services. “Previously, our group services were spread out across campus. Now, we have one designated area for individual, family and group services, with plenty of room to grow our Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOT) programming.”
We are excited to see how God will continue to use this new space to provide new possibilities to the students and families we serve!
Intensive Foster Care
In the fall of 2024, Josiah White’s began providing Intensive Foster Care services as an expansion of our current family services offerings. This program provides additional support to foster and kinship homes serving children and teens with high needs.
Our Family Services team recognized the need for services like Intensive Foster Care over the past few years, and when the opportunity to expand in this area presented itself, it checked all the boxes of the needs the leadership and staff were already aware of.
Josiah White’s is one of 13 agencies throughout the state of Indiana with an Intensive Foster Care program. Our Family Services team is working to build capacity for this program across the state.
Spiritual Life
Since becoming Student Chaplain in early fall of 2024, I have witnessed God moving in profound ways. Every week that went by, more and more youth were accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and we witnessed a total of 15 students make this profound decision.
We are so grateful for the spark of revival we were able to witness in 2024. We have been amazed and encouraged to see the work that God has done on our campus this past year. It brings us even more excitement and anticipation for the amazing things He has in store for 2025 as we continue to trust and rely on His leading!
-Brady Bolen, Student Chaplain
A Look Back: The Story of Rich and Sandy Davis
Less than a week before interviewing to be Josiah White’s new director, Rich Davis heard about the organization for the first time from an inmate at the Indiana Youth Center. That Friday, Rich and his wife, Sandy, visited Josiah White’s, and a few months later, they moved 100 miles north to Wabash with their two young sons and a daughter on the way.
Rich immediately set to work on his vision for Josiah White’s, including significantly increasing the number of staff, improving staff housing, restructuring the school schedule, and expanding the types of extracurricular activities offered to the students.
Sandy fondly recalls her memories of raising her family on Josiah White’s campus. For Rich and Sandy, Josiah White’s was more than just a job—it was home, and it always will be.
After almost 25 years of service at Josiah White’s, God called Rich and Sandy to serve as missionaries in Kenya at Friends Theological College, where they served for five years.
Special thanks to Sandy for sharing her memories and reflections for this story.
