On Oct. 14 contractors broke ground on Doris’s New Place – the Santiam Canyon home of Family Building Blocks.
“We are very excited,” Family Building Blocks Executive Director Patrice Altenhofen said. “We need to be closer to the Canyon.”
Established in 1997 – in response to rising rates of child abuse and neglect stemming from the methamphetamine epidemic in Marion and Polk Counties – Family Building Blocks opened the first “relief nursery” in Eugene, providing support for families as far away as the Santiam Canyon.
“Our focus is children five and younger,” Altenhofen said. “But we really focus on prenatal to three years old because children can’t wait. That time is fleeting. And we know, if parents can bond at that time, that’s often for life.”
With these goals in mind, Family Building Blocks opened its first Stayton location, Doris’s Place – named after the Doris J Wipper Fund, which provides much of its operational funding – in 2010. But, because the site consisted of a single office, the location was only able to provide outreach services.
“That was part of the goal,” Altenhofen said. But without the ability to bring families in, it was difficult to build community trust. “We know you have to be physically present to… make people believe you will be there for the long term.”
Which is why the move to Third Street in 2013 was so exciting. It finally afforded Doris’s Place the ability to offer a playgroup and parenting classes.
“It was a step in the right direction…” Altenhofen said. “But it wasn’t a classroom.”
Which meant Doris’s Space was unable to offer a crucial component of the Family Building Blocks model, the therapeutic early childhood classroom.
“[I]t’s where children spend time with children their age and learn social emotional skills and share meals family style,” Altenhofen said, describing the environment – a ratio of four adults (two of them teachers with an early childhood background) to eight children – which allows each child to have his or her needs met, whether that is being redirected, read to, fed or simply held.
“The idea is to have calm, stability,” Altenhofen said. “We want the same faces every time they go. It’s all natural colors and soft lighting. There are no battery toys that make noise. It’s a calm environment because they are often coming from a chaotic environment. It’s really a wonderful thing.”
But finding the space for such an “abundance mentality” was tricky.
“We kept looking for a really quality early childhood space,” Altenhofen said. “But it’s hard to partner with a church because often their rooms are upstairs. We searched high and low…”
Including in the Santiam Center where, for a time, Doris’s Place was co-located with other service providers.
“That turned out to be a good office space but not a great space for kids,” Altenhofen said.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and wildfire ravaged the Santiam Canyon.
“[W]e were like, we have to find classroom space,” Altenhofen said.
And still they struggled, moving into the community room of an apartment complex, which had previously housed Head Start.
“But it was just the class space and a kitchenette. Our office space was separate,” Altenhofen said, recalling days when the supervisor, who was required to be onsite, would sit in the hallway, working from a TV tray. “We were there for three years.”
As challenging as the space was, it did allow Doris’s Place to accomplish a big goal, relief nursery satellite certification.
“That means we receive [government] funding,” Altenhofen said. While at the same time providing “a safe, nurturing environment to support healthy development and healing from trauma…”
But still Doris’s Place – forced to move once again to its current location inside the Cascade Family Resource Center in Aumsville – did not have a permanent home. That’s when a board member discovered a vacant lot for sale only 0.2 miles from the hospital in Stayton.
“We started our capital campaign in February 2024,” Altenhofen said.
They also enlisted architects and contractors who began to design the new space.
“We decided to go big with five classrooms on the main floor,” she said. And while Doris’s Place will not utilize all five classrooms – Altenhofen currently estimates the organization will start off using just three, two as therapeutic classrooms and one as a play therapy space – the remaining classrooms will house community partners.
“We want to build capacity for the whole community,” Altenhofen explained.
Because that is what Family Building Blocks is all about – building a stronger community by supporting families.
“It’s a two generational approach where you supply classroom experiences for children as well as support for the family,” Altenhofen said. She listed the additional provisions of a clothing closet, a food pantry, educational opportunities and respite care as just some of the many ways the organization helps parents be the best parents they can be.
“That means better health outcomes, lower incarceration rates and higher school achievement,” she said. “And who doesn’t want that?”
Outreach goals for Doris’s New Place
• Increase the number of children ages zero to five served from 16 to 32.
• Enable 37 families to receive home visitation services.
• Allow 48 families to attend parenting classes.
• Ensure dozens of families can attend playgroups that foster parent-child attachment.
• Help hundreds of families meet their basic needs with items like food, diapers and clothing.
How To Help
• The total funds needed to open the doors on Sept. 2, 2025, are $4,022,413 with 78 percent raised so far.
• To donate visit www.familybuildingblocks.org/donate
