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We are thrilled to share The Buckeye Ranch’s fiscal year 2025 Annual Impact Report! For more than 64 years, The Buckeye Ranch has been a beacon of hope for children, youth, and families across Ohio. Our mission to raise hope and restore healing remains at the heart of everything we do. As we reflect on FY25 (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025), we are proud to share the remarkable impact made possible by our dedicated team, generous supporters, and resilient community.  

The Buckeye Ranch’s FY25 Annual Impact Report 

We are proud to share our FY25 Annual Impact Report, which serves as a quantitative and qualitative presentation of The Buckeye Ranch’s demographic depth of reach and programmatic outcomes. In FY25, we supported 9,219 children, youth, and families, delivering 15,442 outreach, service, and prevention encounters across our continuum of care. This is a  29% growth in number of youth served and a 5% growth in outreach, service and prevention encounters.  This growth reflects our commitment to meeting the evolving needs of families and ensuring that every child has access to the right support at the right time. 

• Integrated Care Services: 4,893 individuals served in FY25 

• Child Welfare Services: 2,284 youth served in FY25 

• Community-Based and Education-Based Mental Health Services: 1,834 individuals served in FY25 

• Residential Treatment Services: 196 individuals served in FY25 

Our programs are as diverse as the families we serve. Below, you can see a demographic breakdown of individuals served by The Buckeye Ranch: 

The Buckeye Ranch’s Guiding Principles   

Fundamental to creating and maintaining a healing environment for the children and youth in services and treatment is adherence to four foundational principles of quality care that have been shown to be essential to the healing and growth of children, youth, and families. These principles are:  

• Taking a Strengths-Based approach  

• Having a Family-Centered perspective  

• Providing Trauma-Informed Care  

• Being Culturally Responsive in our understanding of children, youth, families, and team members  

By sharing The Buckeye Ranch’s FY25 Annual Impact Report, we hope to reinforce our commitment to these Principles of Quality Care and amplify their efficacy at creating positive outcomes for children, youth, and families. 

Launching The Right Services at the Right Time 

The needs of families are ever-changing. It’s critical that we respond with the right services and support at the right time, because healthy families and communities are what this work is about. In FY25, we responded to those needs by adding programs such as: 

• Integrated Co-Occurring Treatment (ICT): Supporting youth battling substance use disorder. 

• Early Childhood Mental Health (ECMH): Providing prevention and mental health tools and educational resources for preschools and caretakers of children ages 0-5. 

• Caregiver Peer Support Groups:  In partnership with REAL TALK, Real Support, we launched Caregiver Peer Support Groups in response to caregivers of youth in our programs needing increased help. 

These additions reflect our belief that prevention, early intervention, and family support are critical to long-term success. Our goal is to provide families with the tools, interventions, and supports they need to navigate challenges in their lives and to keep them from experiencing mental health crises. 

Stories of Hope: Real Lives, Real Healing 

Behind every number is a story of hope and healing. There is truly nothing more special than uplifting the successes of families we serve. In FY25, we celebrated reunifications, graduations, and personal milestones. While exploring The Buckeye Ranch’s FY25 Annual Impact Report, you’ll hear more from Kaitee, Sloan, Scott, Jamie, Martay, Jibril, Noah, and more about how The Buckeye Ranch has changed their journey. 

– “You don’t just foster kids, you foster a family. It’s not always easy, but getting the chance to love kids like Kaitee and Sloan and gain family members like Megan and Amy, it’s absolutely worth it.” 

-Scott, Buckeye Ranch foster parent to Kaitee and Sloan 

Learn more about Kaitee and Sloan’s journey. 

“One piece of advice I’d give my younger self is that healing takes time. It doesn’t get better overnight, but it does get better. It may take weeks, months, and even years, but it does get better.” 

-Jamie, former Child Welfare Services and Residential Treatment Services recipient 

Learn more about Jamie’s story. 

“The Bonner Academy is a good place to be. For me, it was easy to be myself after I got to know the staff. The kids can be themselves here … I would love to one day work for The Buckeye Ranch. I want to give back and help other kids that might be going through challenges I experienced. Every kid deserves to feel like they have someone to believe in them.” 

-Martay, former student at The Bonner Academy 

Learn more about Martay’s journey. 

“I learned how to talk about what I was struggling with, and my clinicians set me up with an intervention specialist at school. I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for my clinicians at The Buckeye Ranch, I could not have overcome these challenges.” 

-Jibril, Somali Outreach and Mental Health client 

Read more about Jibril’s story. 

“The reason why I believe this work is important, and it is also important for the community, is it breaks these generational traumas where trauma just passes down from family member to family member, from parent or caregiver to child.” 

-Noah, former CME Care Coordinator at The Buckeye Ranch 

Learn more about Care Management Entity (CME). 

Meeting the Youth Mental Health Crisis Head-On 

As the youth mental health crisis continued to grow, we knew we needed to step up. In response, we collaborated with Nationwide Children’s Hospital to develop our new Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) program, which we launched in November of 2023. The program provides a healing space for youth who need to continue their recovery after a hospital stay before returning home – something no organization in Ohio provided for youth and families prior.  

To scale this program, in January of 2024, The Buckeye Ranch broke ground on a $35M Residential Treatment Services campus expansion project to expand our PRTF program, as well as support our traditional Qualified Residential Treatment Program. We’ve seen tremendous progress on this project throughout FY25, and we’re getting close to completion thanks to our generous community of supporters! 

Other Learnings in The Buckeye Ranch’s FY25 Annual Impact Report   

We hope you’ll consider reading more about our impact over the last year. In this year’s report, you’ll learn more about:  

• Total individuals served  

• Total Individual demographic breakdown  

• Breakdown of impact by Service line and programs including:  

• Child Welfare Services   

• Integrated Care Services  

• Community and Education-Based Mental Health Services  

• Residential Treatment Services  

• Mental Health Prevention Work   

• Financial Summary 

Thank you for being part of our journey. Together, we are building a healthier, more hopeful future for Ohio’s children and families. 

We are excited every year to showcase the incredible work we’ve been able to do for children, youth. and families at The Buckeye Ranch. Click here to view our impact reports from years prior.  

As we look forward to the new year, we ask that you consider giving a gift in support of our continued growth and work in the community.  

As President and CEO Vickie Thompson-Sandy shared, “Partners like you make this work possible. Thanks to the commitment of our generous community of supporters, we are able to continue to realize our mission and expand our continuum of care to help raise hope and provide healing for even more children, youth, and families who are counting on us.” 

You can make your gift here.