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YouthCare 

Description

Each night in Seattle, 700–1,000 young people have no safe place to sleep. That's thousands of homeless children and young adults over the course of a year, trying to survive on our streets. In 2010, YouthCare served over 4,500 through street outreach, residency, and education and employment programs — working day and night to get them off the streets and preparing for life.             

YouthCare is an organization with close to 40 years of experience and national stature. From dry socks and meals for youth on the street, to residential and other site-based programs that make for success upon independence, YouthCare is unusual in this community for its ability to provide — on its own and with partners — services of the necessary scope. Limited only by resources, this organization knows how to wrap every homeless youth in a best-practices “continuum of care.”

Mission Statement
YouthCare builds confidence and self-sufficiency for homeless youth by providing a continuum of care that includes outreach, basic services, emergency shelter, housing, counseling, education, and employment training.
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YouthCare
2500 NE 54th St 
Seattle 
WA
98105-3142 
(206) 694-4500 

Dr. Melinda A. Giovengo, PhD 
Executive Director 

Programs

YouthCare Programs

Outreach
Our street outreach team engages youth on the streets, providing warm clothing, medical supplies, food and service referrals (over 14,000 times in 2010). As we gain their trust, youth come to the James W. Ray Orion Center, our drop-in location where they can receive meals five days a week, access showers, clean clothing, and hygiene supplies. Staff at the Orion Center are on-hand to discuss counseling, case management, housing options, and more—finding out “what’s next?” for that young person. In 2010, over 4,500 youth accessed services at the Orion Center.

Housing
Finding employment or attending school is hard when your first concern is where you’ll sleep tonight. Our housing options provide youth with a safe space to plan their next step while simultaneously receiving case management and counseling. We offer short-term emergency shelter for those on the streets, as well as transitional housing programs for youth 15-21. Finally, youth can “graduate” into our independent housing, learning how to budget and pay bills, while continuing with a case manager. All of our long-term housing requires that youth work towards education and employment goals.

Education and Employment Training
Many homeless youth arrive at our door with gaps in knowledge, or little work experience. Some arrive simply without the confidence in themselves to believe they can succeed. Our employment counselors work with youth to develop resumes and conduct mock interviews, while our employment training programs teach youth customer service skills, computer repair, or construction work. Meanwhile, youth can work towards their GED or high school diploma at our on-site Interagency Academy, a partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

Recent Successes and Current Challenges

YouthCare was chosen by the City of Seattle to run The Bridge, a new residential recovery program for sexually exploited youth. This partnership launched in May 2010, headed by Seattle’s Human Services Department, in coordination with other agencies and with support from community donors. YouthCare's Bridge Program is the only program in the Pacific Northwest providing residential services, including emergency shelter and long term housing, to girls and boys under 18 who have experienced sexual exploitation.

YouthCare serves breakfast, lunch and dinner weekdays at the James W. Ray Orion Center. With the number of youth served up almost 50%, volunteer support for meeting this basic need is more important than ever. When a group of 5–8 purchases for, prepares and serves meals, the youth benefit from a good, hot meal, and the volunteers benefit from the experience. This is a great opportunity for corporate groups, book clubs and other community groups to connect while performing a valuable service.

Evaluation


YouthCare provides services to homeless youth and young adults in Seattle.

Proven Success
YouthCare is experiencing higher client demand than at any time previously in their history. By the close of 2010 they had served over 4,500 homeless youth people, up from 2,000 in 2008. YouthCare is recognized in the homeless youth community as an organization that delivers on its promises. They have waiting lists for all of their program and services.

The James W. Ray Orion Center is YouthCare’s flagship site, where street youths ages 12 to 24, can drop in for meals, shower, do laundry, and enroll in a variety of programs aimed at getting them off the streets. The longer young people are on the streets, the greater their chances of becoming chronically homeless adults. 93 % of homeless youth who access services will not be homeless five years later.

Seattle is a leader in the nation in the recovery and service provision for sexually exploited youth. YouthCare is also one of the only agencies nationwide dedicating resources and programming to identifying and serving sexually exploited boys and trans-gendered youth through their Bridge Program. The Bridge is a residential recovery program for sexually exploited youth. Focus for the upcoming year will be on refining and articulating the service model and completing the City of Seattle funded program and recidivism evaluation as well as piloting a sexual exploitation prevention curriculum in local middle schools and high schools.

Use of Best Practices
For ongoing programmatic evaluation, they maintain a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) process in which all client records are peer-reviewed quarterly to identify service trends, unmet needs, and areas for improvement. In addition, YouthCare tracks annual service levels in each program and is able to perform detailed longitudinal comparisons as well as projections.

Collaboration
YouthCare partners with FareStart to offer their Barista Training and Education Program. This partnership combines FareStart’s expertise in culinary mentorship with the facilities, youth expertise and case management resources of YouthCare. YouthCare also partners with Cisco Systems to offer YouthTech where youth learn computer skills.

YouthCare is working with Auburn Youth Resources, Cocoon House and Friends of Youth to improve services by developing and implementing outreach systems to connect youth to shelter within 48 hours, adding housing, and creating a service model that includes life skills, education and employment.

YouthCare is also part of a new partnership with King County Metro to install a National Safe Place program locally. It will provide access to immediate help and supportive resources to youth in crisis through a network of sites sustained by agencies, volunteers and businesses. All a young person who is scared, lost, or in trouble needs to do is approach a bus driver and request help. The bus driver will contact a professional who will meet the bus at a specified location and take the individual to a shelter, where he or she will have access to services.

Grant History with The Seattle Foundation:

Grants Awarded through The Seattle Foundation Grantmaking Program:

DateAmountPurpose
3/10/2012 $25,000.00support general operating expenses.
6/10/2010 $35,000.00support general operating expenses.
6/11/2009 $7,500.00to support the Alive and Free violence intervention training.
3/10/2008 $35,000.00support general operating expenses.
12/15/2005 $30,000.00support the purchase of computer equipment and general operating expenses.

Financials

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