Since 2001, the Yolo Crisis Nursery has served over 8,000 children and their families. The Nursery’s programs protect children from immediate harm and create lasting change by breaking generational cycles of abuse and neglect.
1 in 4 children will experience abuse or neglect before adulthood. The cost of child abuse accrues over the lifetime of the children affected. In 2022, his cost was estimated to be $24.4 billion for the State of California and $124 million for Yolo County. The Nursery’s trauma-trained professional staff identify and alleviate the impacts of abuse and toxic stress on children’s well-being and development. Children are incredibly resilient, with early intervention and treatment the impact of abuse can be reduced over time. The Nursery's staff and programs have a 98% success rate for keeping children safe and out of the child welfare system.
Children who suffer trauma and abuse are more likely to experience physical and mental illness as adults, limiting their education and future potential. We need to end this public health crisis.
Over the last five years, Yolo County’s annual rate of child maltreatment cases has exceeded the State’s overall percentages for ages zero to five. (1) Investment and early intervention during these critical developmental years can change the course of a child’s life and prevent future costly emotional and physical issues.
The Yolo Crisis Nursery protects children ages zero to five from immediate harm while working with their families to become stable and independent.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are common. 50% of California families report having experienced 1 or more ACEs at some point in their home. ACEs can include neglect, physical, drug or alcohol abuse, exposure to domestic violence, homelessness, food insecurity, or even parental separation and divorce.
Children who suffer prolonged trauma as a result of ACEs are more likely to suffer physical and emotional issues as adults. The toxic stress experienced as a child changes their brain and physical development. ACEs are a root cause of some of the most harmful, persistent, and expensive societal and health challenges facing our world today.
Prevention, early intervention, and treatment of ACEs during early childhood changes the course of children’s lives. For over 20 years, Yolo Crisis Nursery has been a first responder for infants and young children experiencing this.
Sadly, abuse and neglect are often cyclical and generational. Children who are abused or neglected are more likely to enter into violent relationships as teens and adults and to grow up to abuse their own children. The Nursery’s whole family approach helps break this cycle by preventing and stopping irreparable harm to children and by working with families to empower them to become stable and thrive.
Founded in 2001, the Yolo Crisis Nursery is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The Nursery provides emergency childcare and wraparound services for families experiencing the trauma of domestic violence, mental or physical health emergencies, substance abuse, homelessness, sudden job loss, and other profound adversities. For over 20 years we have helped over 8,000 children and their families overcome crises and thrive. The Nursery's preservation-oriented wraparound approach has helped prevent 99% of the families we serve from being referred to Child Protective Services.
Citations:
* As defined by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), the poverty threshold for a family of four that rents their home is $32,470. PPIC notes that safety net programs reduce the poverty rate for children. Thus, without resources like the Crisis Nursery that connect families with safety net programs, our county’s poverty rate would be even higher.
1 Retrieved January 24, 2023, UC Berkeley California Child Welfare Indicators Project website. URL: https://ccwip.berkeley.edu
2 Retrieved January 24, 2023: https://www.ppic.org/interactive/california-poverty-by-county-and-legislative-district/
3 Retrieved Aug 25, 2021, from CDC website. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6949a1.htm
The mission of the Yolo Crisis Nursery is to provide early intervention services in a safe environment to nurture healthy and resilient children, strengthen parents, and preserve families.
We need your help to serve more children. Every donation helps to change the lives of children and reshape the future of our community. Healthy children mature into stable, independent adults.
The Yolo Crisis Nursery’s whole family approach to avoid the additional trauma of family separation for the children has had a 98% success rate over the last 20 years.
Your donation will go to supporting the children and families served by the following Yolo Crisis Nursery programs:
Respite care and Wraparound Services - Support is needed for the Yolo Crisis Nursery’s emergency respite childcare and wraparound services for parents and guardians. In the last year, we served 836 children and their families.
Care Packages - Last year we distributed almost 3,300 care packages to at-risk families in Yolo County. Our Care Packages program provides essential items such as diapers, wipes, baby formula, food, and clothing. Care packages are offered to any family in need. This program is special because there are no questions asked and requests are rarely denied.
In addition to the growth in the number of care packages, now help with food insecurity is frequently requested. The Care Package program at the Yolo Crisis Nursery is supported by in-kind and financial donations from our community.
Nursery’s programming - This year we continue to grow with our focus on expanding our Help Me Grow and ACEs screenings. These screenings are critical because children who experience toxic stress are more likely to have serious mental and physical illnesses – like heart disease and cancer – as adults. The Nursery is in need of funding to continue to expand our services to reach more children.
Staffing and Resources - Being a service organization, we rely on a talented staff of highly trained individuals to provide the best care for our client children and families. With the changing landscape of services, we are in need of funds to help cover increased staffing costs. By expanding our pool of trauma-trained on-call staff we can ensure that the Nursery can provide the most immediate and effective support to families in the most urgent situations. In addition, these funds will also help support our front-line programs staff's salary that is not covered by grants and other funding.
Space - It has become abundantly clear that in order to continue meeting the needs of children and families in crisis and to fulfill our vision that every child in Yolo County grows up in a safe, loving, and stable home, our small 1,400-square-foot rental home is grossly undersized and inadequate. While a campaign to build a new home (with move-in slated for early 2025) has been extremely successful, the campaign funds are completely separate from general operating costs which continue to rise. We still rely on donor contributions which are critical to our day-to-day operations.
At Yolo Crisis Nursery, we strive to ensure that all children are free from child abuse, are thriving, and in a safe, nurturing environment. We recognize that child abuse and neglect occur when families and communities experience challenging life circumstances, and we acknowledge that challenging life circumstances more often impact families and communities of color and those with limited resources. We are committed to improving our services, programs, and resources to ensure greater equity for all we serve, especially communities of color and communities without resources, by taking the following actions: we will intentionally recruit board members that share our commitment to DEAI and that represent the communities we serve; we will include DEAI principles as part of our recruiting, hiring, and onboarding and ongoing training of all staff, especially staff who directly support our community; we will annually review and update our program and service materials to ensure full accessibility by the community members who use them; and we will intentionally and consistently engage in conversations with our partners and communities on topics of DEAI. (Draft statement under final board review.)
Organization name
Yolo Crisis Nursery
other names
YCN
2001
Tax id (EIN)
47-1006055
Mission Category
Human Services
Operating Budget
$1,000,001-$5 million
Organization Need
Funding: Program, Space: Office or Other, Funding: Unrestricted
Demographics Served
Youth & Children
Local Counties Served
Yolo
Equity Statement
Equity Statement
Address
1107 Kennedy Place Suite 5Yolo, CA, US