About the Nonprofit
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Colette’s Children’s Home is a nonprofit organization based in Huntington Beach, CA that has provided housing and supportive services to over 4,800 homeless women and children over the past 20 years. Colette’s Children’s Home’s (CCH) mission is to provide homeless single women and homeless mothers with children a safe home and nurturing environment where they obtain compassionate support and services needed to achieve self-sufficiency.
CCH began renting a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Huntington Beach in 1998, housing up to 6 homeless women and children each night. The agency now owns and operates 16 Homeless Shelter Program and permanent housing sites. As of January 2019, we have the capacity to serve up to 300 homeless women and children in our shelters at any given point in time. Our shelters are located in the cities of Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, Placentia, and Garden Grove.
Having provided safe shelter and supportive services to the homeless in our community for over 20 years, we know that a shelter is never a replacement for a home; however, our homeless housing intervention programs provide needed support to those who have the highest housing stability barriers while seeking permanent housing solutions. Our commitment to our clients and to our community is to provide short term shelter and stabilization services that seeks to obtain long term housing in the most cost effective manner, being ever aware of the need to be good stewards of public funding. Our goal is for program participants to become self-sufficient and transition from homelessness to stable and independent housing.
Our target population is homeless single women and homeless mothers with children throughout Orange County. Our founders’ initial vision was to provide housing and supportive services for homeless women with children and homeless single women who had been turned away from other shelters. We serve a very high risk population. We continue to champion this vision in our daily operations and thus we have few restrictions on our program requirements. CCH has always focused on limited requirements for program entry; we require an individual to be experiencing homelessness, and provide a negative drug test at time of interview and that the client is able to work full time. 100% of the clients we serve are below the low to moderate income range most of the falling into the extremely low-income range. We prioritize clients who are literally homeless living on the streets, in their vehicles or coming from emergency shelters. Clients often have no source of income or only minimal income coming from entitlement programs at program entry. This agency is unique in that we are one of the few shelters in our area that serve women who suffer from substance abuse issues, unemployment, those who are victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, economic hardship, or women who have other challenges making it difficult to find shelter in traditional housing programs.
Upon intake to our Homeless Shelter Program (HSP), each client is assigned a case manager who works with her to identify the issues that led to them being homeless. An individual recovery or work plan is then developed with clearly defined goals and objectives to overcome the challenges that caused our client to become homeless. In addition to shelter, CCH also provides a total support system such as housing, utilities, food vouchers, bus passes, clothing, and hygiene products.
In order to achieve the agency’s goal of self-sufficiency for each client, our program provides help for clients to reunify with their children, resolve legal and financial problems, maintain sobriety, secure gainful employment, and establish a budget and savings plan whereby 80% of their discretionary income is placed in a savings account to ensure the financial means to continued stability upon program graduation. We also support increased self-determination and self-sufficiency through Life Skills class meetings held once a week in the evenings. These classes address topics such as parenting, job skills, securing employment, financial budgeting and management, reunification with children, and substance abuse relapse prevention. In addition, we seek to encourage the healing of damaged family relationships, the building of trust and support among friends, and achieving the transition to affordable, permanent housing.
CCH measures the ultimate success rate of our program by the graduation rate of our clients. Our current client graduation rate is at 74%. Specific measurements that are used to determine the outcome of clients’ success are built in to our service delivery plan. Our staff closely monitors the success of our clients through the use of our Key Performance Indicators or KPIs: resolution of legal issues, maintaining sobriety, reunification with children, completion of court appointed programs such as drug and perinatal programs, securing gainful employment within 30 days of program entry, achieving monthly goals as outlined in work plan, implementing and following monthly budgeting and savings program, restoration of relationships and emotional support with family and friends, increased parenting skills and relationships with children, and ultimately graduating from our Homeless Shelter Program to stable permanent housing. Our case managers, maintain and update our database which tracks all clients and their improvements.
The need for our services cannot be overstated. In 2018, CCH received requests from 4,249 homeless women and children seeking shelter and supportive services. We housed and served 555 homeless women and children. 262 (75%) homeless women and children who left the program entered permanent housing. CCH also helped reunify 22 mothers with 40 children.
CCH recognizes there are many successful steps our clients take on the road to graduating from our program and becoming self-sufficient. Many of our staff and board members have experienced the same life circumstances and hardships that our clients face, and we are therefore uniquely qualified to aid our clients in recovery. We believe in walking with our clients on their journey; supporting and interceding on their behalf with social service agencies, family and drug court, and also assisting with the reunification of their children. They become a part of our family.
