San Joaquin County residents
The Child Abuse Prevention Council SJC
The mission of the San Joaquin County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) is to protect children and strengthen families through awareness and outcome-driven programs delivered with compassion. We are an agency dedicated to preventing child abuse, ensuring safety, and providing education and treatment for abused and at-risk children and abusive and at-risk parents.
The CAPC was formed in 1978 as a result of a Grand Jury’s investigation into the death of a three-year-old girl, Latanya Smith.
Despite Child Welfare Intervention that resulted in her removal from her home and subsequent return, Latanya was beaten to death by her mother’s boyfriend. This tragic case compelled community members to demand that more be done to prevent abuse. An independent non-profit, The Child Abuse Council was born with the intent of preventing child abuse and neglect. A few years later, the name was changed to The Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC).
Since then and for more than 40 years, the CAPC has worked with parents who are ready to make the sometimes difficult changes necessary to provide a safe and nurturing home for their children.
The Child Abuse Prevention Council is committed to protecting the children of our San Joaquin County community, strengthening their families, and giving hope to those seeking to break the sometimes-generational cycle of physical, verbal, sexual, neglect, and emotional abuse. CAPC is a place where parents can learn to be better parents, where children can heal from the wounds of abuse and neglect, and where families can improve their quality of life. While the CAPC is committed to responding to crises to ensure the safety of children, we are not in the business of offering temporary band-aids that don't address the core issues that bring families to that point of crisis. Many of the families we serve face multiple barriers to their success: substance abuse, domestic violence, unemployment, lack of education and life skills, and/or homelessness.
Our programs are free, confidential, outcome-driven, and always delivered with compassion. Services are available in English and Spanish and with the help of translation services, we are able to provide services in any other language as well. Services are available to anyone in crisis regardless of income, age, gender, ethnicity, physical or mental challenges, religion, citizenship status, or sexual orientation.
The Child Abuse Prevention Council endeavors to achieve our goal of protecting children and strengthening families by employing four primary strategies:
1.Early Education services,
1.Family Strengthening services,
1.Clinical Services, and
1.Community Awareness and Education
Our approach to addressing family challenges is multi-disciplinary, cooperative, and collaborative, and ensures that all services are delivered from a trauma-informed perspective, are relationship-centered, and always strengths-based. This work cannot be done for families, but rather CAPC staff work with families to make the necessary life changes through these available direct services:
Family Strengthening
Family Intervention Program: A Case management style program offering parenting support, effective discipline strategies, connections to intentional resources and community based advocacy. This program is focused on keeping children safe and keeping families out of the child welfare system by building up the protective factors that ensure they are strong and resilient. A similar program, Safety Net, is a case management program provided for families engaged in the child welfare system, but who do not meet the threshold for Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement.
Parent Café: Since January 2012, CAPC has hosted Parent Cafes throughout San Joaquin County – including our most rural areas. Parent Cafes are free parent support groups that serve as a guide for parents to have their own conversations about keeping their families strong based on the Strengthening Families Framework: The 6 Protective Factors. This program also serves as a mechanism for the emergence and training of neighborhood/parent leaders who can continue the Parent Café after the CAPC has laid the groundwork.
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Program: A program that recruits, trains and manages volunteers who mentor and advocate for children in the foster care system during the dependency court process. CASA’s act as fact-finders for judges and ensure that foster children are not forgotten, but rather are afforded every opportunity to have a healthy and happy life.
The CASA program is an opportunity to intervene in a child’s life when they are most vulnerable and can decrease incidences of juvenile justice offenses and reentry into the juvenile justice system. CASA volunteers significantly improve the trajectory of system-involved youth and directly impact the productivity and safety within their communities. Studies show that youth in foster care who are connected to a CASA report significantly higher levels of hope; which is ultimately linked to improved academic success, overall well-being, increases in self-control, positive social relationships, and optimism. Further, studies indicate that children with a CASA have higher graduation rates and are less likely to experience homelessness.
Family Finding Program: The primary goal of this program is to make connections for children referred to the CASA program with the intent of identifying people who are willing to offer a lifelong home and/or an unconditional commitment to being a part of a lifetime support to children in the foster care system. Research has shown that identifying these supports takes months, sometimes years from identification to connection per child. The CAPC is dedicated to finding connections for youth in long-term foster care to allow them the dignity of growing up knowing family and establishing lifelong connections.
Home Visitation Services: provides services to children 0-3 and their families with the aim of increasing access to early education resources and improving the child’s overall health and development. Services are offered at the family’s home, utilizing the Parents as Teachers (PAT) curriculum.
FamilyWORKS: This project provides home visitation services to California Work Opportunity and Responsibility for Kids (CalWORKs) families with children ages 0 to 5 (must be enrolled into the program prior to age 3) utilizing the Parents as Teachers curriculum. Families in this program receive assistance with resume writing, proper application completion and submission, interview skills, life skills training, and job retention. Other services provided include Raising A Reader, an early literacy and family engagement program; screening and referral services for CalFresh (food stamps), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and free or reduced meal services; developmental screenings through the Ages & Stages Questionnaires; and access to Parent Education Workshops. Must be Cal-Works (Welfare to work eligible or exempt).
Journey WORKS: Supports CalWORKs families with children ages 0-5 who are facing, have faced, or are at risk of experiencing challenges related to alcohol, drug use, and/or mental health issues. Family Advocates play a key role in connecting these families with valuable community resources while providing a strong foundation for creating a healthy, positive, and stable home environment.
Project HOME: Family Advocate delivers consistent street outreach to unhouse families living in encampments and tent cities, focused on relationship & rapport building. Through family-centered support, encouragement, and a strengths-based approach, the CAPC Family Advocate will work diligently to assess family needs and link them to necessary resources in the community, while identifying strategies to stay connected with families who move frequently to mitigate the likelihood of “losing” children. The goal of the program is to stabilize families’ needs & equip them with the skills, resources, and networks that can sustain that stabilization
