Colette's Children's Home

The mission of Colette’s Children’s Home is to provide homeless single women and homeless mothers with children a safe home in a nurturing environment where they obtain the support and services needed to achieve self-sufficiency.

Our core housing programs include our Emergency Shelter Program which provides shelter and services for up to 30 days, our Transitional Housing Program which provides shelter and supportive services for 6 to 12 months, our Permanent Housing Placement Program which provides financial assistance and placement services to program graduates, and our Permanent Affordable Housing Program which provides affordable rental units to income qualified tenants.

Our core supportive services include low cost or no cost housing and utilities, intensive case management, life skills classes which address relapse prevention, parenting skills, and job skills, assistance with budgeting and savings, and essential physical needs such as assistance with food, transportation, clothing, household items, personal and infant/children items.

Intensive case management includes creating individualized development plans. The development or work plans are designed to address each situation or barrier that exists in the women’s life that either caused homelessness to occur, or that will prevent her and her children from regaining an emotionally and physically stable life in a long-term, permanent, and affordable housing environment. Case management also includes assisting the client with obtaining gainful employment, budgeting of income, saving up to 80% of adjusted monthly income, resolution of legal issues, client advocacy with social services, family court, and drug court, and maintaining a healthy life free from substance abuse.

Additionally, case managers develop specific monthly goals with each client designed to resolve issues and to increase self-esteem, motivation, and confidence. The individualized development plans are essential to achieving and measuring client success and outcomes, however, the most beneficial aspect of our case management is the care and concern each client receives from our dedicated staff. Most of our clients state that the support they receive from our case managers is the first time they have ever experienced such unconditional and genuine care, concern, and commitment. This business that we are in is about service. It is people caring and giving to others in need.

Colette’s Children’s Home, a California Public Benefit Corporation, was founded in 1998 to address the needs of homeless women with children and chronically homeless single women in Orange County. Our agency provides shelter and supportive services to those in our care on an emergency basis, through our Transitional Housing Program, and through permanent housing financial assistance and placement.

We are directed by our guiding principles and core values. Our values are compassion for those in need, commitment to each other and those we serve, confidentiality to maintain anonymity and dignity, physical and emotional safety to protect our women and children, dedication to service, agency integrity, and program excellence.

Beginning as a grass roots organization in November of 1998 with volunteer help and relying on donations, the agency now has professional staff and offices, owns seven shelter buildings, manages and operates an eighth shelter and five permanent housing sites. Beginning with a capacity to serve approximately 6 homeless women and children at a given point in time, as of May 2013, we have the capacity to serve up to 164 homeless women and children in our shelters at a given point in time.

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. 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.