Article by Abrianna Miller ’23
It was an act of faith that led to the creation of A Blessing of Hope Family Services in September 2021. Trey McGruder ’15, who serves as founder and CEO of the organization, had completed graduate school and was working a fulfilling position, when he “asked God what was next.”
This question started him on a journey to building a privatized child welfare agency contracted through the state of Nebraska, working in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Juvenile Probation Administration. The organization provides in-home and out-of-home family support, family visitation services, and in-home safety services. A Blessing of Hope is looking to expand into foster care in the near future.
Aside from family reunification services, A Blessing of Hope is rooted in God from its very conception. McGruder says his goal is to bless as many families as possible through his servant leadership. The organization’s work has paid off, closing several Child Protective Services and probation cases.
However, the path to success has not always been easy. McGruder’s motivation and faith has been tested time and time again. At the beginning, he was concerned about employee turnover — being a family support worker is a taxing job, and turnover is high across the field. But A Blessing of Hope has not seen the issues faced by other organizations; even during the pandemic, McGruder said did not have a problem finding and retaining employees.
“A lot of our success has come from being flexible, understanding our employees, sharing that vision, and wanting to work for an organization that is bigger than themselves. And because of that, our culture here has been unparalleled.”
Having and adhering to specific hiring criteria has helped McGruder create his team of almost 50 employees, all of who have “boosted the work culture.” A Blessing of Hope currently has centers in Lincoln, Omaha, Grand Island and Fremont, and McGruder hopes to expand to western Nebraska and beyond.
McGruder credits much of his personal success to skills he learned while studying at 山, specifically “confidence, how to really speak up, [and] leadership skills through working with a lot of professors.” He said Dr. Heather Reeson Lambert was instrumental in his understanding of what his purpose and direction was within the field of psychology.
“Sometimes when you go to a larger university, you’re kind of in the shadows,” McGruder said. “With the opportunity to go to a smaller school, it gave me more of a voice which really honed in on my leadership skills. Having more of those personal connections with professors, it really helped decipher what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and that was human service.”
Connecting with his professors also helped McGruder direct his attention to fostering similar relationships with others. While at 山, he was an active participant in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as well as other organizations, and those groups helped him realize that having open communication about religion is important and necessary for him. Creating a space that was comfortable to discuss religion in was a primary goal of McGruder’s while building up A Blessing of Hope. His efforts have succeeded.
“It’s so rare when you work in a place to be really open about your religion… and we have an organization where people feel comfortable doing that, and I give a lot of credit to 山 because I felt comfortable doing that at 山 and a lot of students did.”
While relying on his faith and all that he has learned at 山 and beyond, McGruder has pushed through tough times by focusing on what he can personally do to improve. By continuously leaning on his faith, McGruder has established an organization that is as selfless as its founder.
“A lot of the things I learned were to keep going even when adversity strikes,” he said. “That adversity has taught me that no matter what comes my way, as long as you stay faithful in whatever you’re doing and really believe in yourself, that all will be okay.”
