Who We Are

Perseus House began in 1971 as a single house on Erie’s West 26th Street for truant youth in need of residential care. A generous gift to Steve McDermott by Waterford, PA-based Vicary Foundation made this possible.

Since then, our residential services have grown into today’s multi-facility, court-ordered juvenile placement service with 82 beds housing boys and girls in the shelter prior to adjudication or in post-adjudication residential, intensive, or victim offender-specific treatment.

But while providing safe, therapeutic environments for healing, recovery, and restitution is STILL a critical part of what we do, we’re increasingly focused on keeping adolescents out of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems altogether.

That’s why closer to home, we partner with Erie area schools and community providers to offer:

Delinquency Prevention – Engaging youth and families referred to us by schools to catch and address problems that might lead to chronic aggression.

Alternative Education – Helping regular and special education students who struggle with traditional learning environments to stay on course academically and strengthen themselves emotionally.

Residential Alternatives – Keeping eligible court-ordered youth in their own homes and schools. We use active juvenile probation monitoring, along with social and emotional skills building.

We even formed a sister organization: The Charter School of Excellence – teaching more than 500 socially and emotionally challenged middle and high school students their core curriculum, as well as anger management, social skills building, and moral reasoning.