Wade Wellness Raise $10K At Inaugural Event

By Emilie Parten, Reporter on the Rove

Wade Wellness Services put together an incredible program to go with its lovely banquet fundraiser last Thursday at the Cook Center, giving the audience a clear picture of who they are and what they do. The center has an incredible mission that demands reaching for something that was once near impossible: a child’s permanency in a low-income family.

Families are created in any number of ways. Every story is different and there are too many ways that a child could end up in a home without one or both of their biological parents. They get moved to another family member or family friend where a lack of funds, resources and legal options make it hard for them to have the stability needed to live a relatively normal life. Wade Wellness Services offers programs in order for those makeshift families to create stability and permanence.

The programs include helping a parent reconnect with a teenager who may be going down a more difficult path, aides’ low-income families raising other individual’s child or children because of abandonment, incarceration or other unfortunate event, with discounted legal rates, no cost counseling and mental status monitoring for kids and caretakers alike and mediation in familial disputes in indigent guardianship cases.
Karol Wade Wright, the visionary behind the Wade Wellness Services and its missions, decided 21 years ago to quit her job at the prison in order to treat children in the foster system and began Wade Wellness providing forensic legal services and children’s mental health counseling services for more than 20 years before opening Wade Wellness Services as a non-profit in October 2023. Both she and Pamela began taking appointments and providing services even for those who lacked the payments for those services. “This program belongs to the community. It ain’t about me. it is about the community and the children of Navarro County,” Wright stated.

Pamela Crawford, the Executive Director for Wade Wellness, has provided court services and social work for more than 20 years. After retiring, she joined the Wade Wellness crew set to only work one day a week. She is the one Karol credits with teaching her everything she knows now. Pam Crawford came out of retirement to help build Wade Wellness into the program it is today. Crawford worked for CPS back in the late 80’s, when there weren’t as many resources and a CASA had not been established yet within the county. In the years that followed, there were so many members of the community that worked tirelessly as a team to make much needed improvements to the system and it’s ability to provide the citizens of Navarro County with the resources needed.

Judge John Jackson introduced the speaker for the evening, Judge Patrick Simons of Limestone/ Freestone County. Judge Simons is set to retire in the near future. He graduated Mexia High School and then from Navarro College in the early 70’s before moving on to the University of Texas. He was the county attorney for the first half of the 80’s and was elected into his position as Judge in 2009. He talked about how things were back when he first got elected compared to how things are today, telling stories about his experiences with the judicial system and, more specifically, with Karol Wade Wright who had helped him in a number of cases he thought there would be no way out of. He touched upon how family law had changed from then to now, noting the immense amount of detail that is discussed now as opposed to the simplicity of the 80’s.

The fundraiser made over $10,000 in its inaugural year, and many of its sponsors, law offices in particular were the primary participants. People that made the night possible were sponsors like John H. Jackson Law Office, Michael J. Crawford Law, Kerri Anderson Donica, M. R. Smith Parlor for Funerals, Corsicana Cleaners and the Wade Wellness Advisory Council.

With so many members of the community dedicated to helping low-income families in maintaining permanence and stability, Navarro County is very lucky to have the incredible people who fight so hard for families who don’t have enough. The impact Karol Wade Wright, Pamela Crawford and all the others who fight for the cause, have had on the families of Navarro County will only continue to grow, making our community a stronger, more unified city with a common goal.

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