CCCC- Coordinating Council for Children in Crisis

Programs

Care Coordination for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs
Empowerment and Literacy Groups
The Family Support Collaborative
Family Violence Outreach Prevention
Integrated Family Violence Services
Neighborhood Victim Advocacy Program
New Haven Family Partnership
Nurturing Families Network
Parent Education Program
The Parenting Support and Parental Rights Initiative
Teen Outreach Program

Care Coordination for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs

CCCC partners with families and providers to link children and youth with special health care needs and their families to services and resources in a coordinated effort to maximize the potential of children and youth, optimize health outcomes and improve quality of care. Comprehensive, patient-centered services are provided by four Care Coordinators responsible for completing initial assessments, developing an individualized, comprehensive and coordinated Care Plan, helping families and providers to understand, support and implement the Care Plan, making needed service referrals and addressing barriers to provision of needed services, monitoring and updating the Care Plan and providing information, education and supportive counseling to children, youth and family members and working closely with the regional and statewide Family Support Networks.

Empowerment and Literacy Groups

The Child Empowerment Group provides counseling, early intervention and educational services over twelve weeks for 1.5 hours each session to children who have witnessed domestic abuse. These services help children cope with their current or past trauma to progress into adulthood with a stable and healthy foundation that fosters personal growth and well-being. The Child Empowerment Group's long-term goal is to end the cycle of domestic abuse and all forms of violence for children who are being physically abused or who witness violence in their homes.

The Healthy Relationships Educational Group is focused on early intervention and violence prevention and protection services for middle school students. The group works to reduce dating and domestic violence by helping students develop leadership skills and empowering them with knowledge concerning dating violence, sexual assault, and domestic violence. A goal of the group is to empower students with the knowledge and motivation to protect themselves from dangerous situations. The group also seeks to encourage participants to educate their friends and classmates about the material learned in the group. By sharing their knowledge about the many forms of violence, the group will have great potential to reach beyond its direct participants. Group topics include emotional, physical, and sexual violence, dating violence, gender roles and sexual control, anger, communication and peer pressure.

Motheread/Fatheread helps parents use reading and story sharing techniques as a way to connect with their children. Motheread/Fatheread teaches comprehension, critical thinking, problem solving, speaking and writing skills while helping parents and children explore their own needs and feelings through the use of multicultural children's literature. This program is made possible through a partnership between The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and The Connecticut Humanities Council.

CCCC's programs are truly comprehensive and children and families receive an array of services to meet their needs in one place. In addition to our core programs, we ensure that basic needs are met through our food bank, clothing, diapers and an emergency fund. Staff members often go over and beyond for families and provide transportation to specialized services and court, school or medical appointments. CCCC has found that most of its families would not have received help without its services. They participate because of the talented and caring staff, comprehensive and effective programs, and free, bilingual and bicultural services.

The Family Support Collaborative

The Family Support Collaborative is a partnership between CCCC and ALSO-Cornerstone and was created in 1998 to prevent child abuse and neglect and strengthen families. The program serves children at-risk of child abuse or neglect whose parents are homeless, have a psychiatric disability, substance abuse problem, or cognitive limitation and who face multiple other challenges to healthy parenting such as poverty, lack of transportation and child care, single parent families led by women with no extended family support, and a general lack of parenting and healthy child development knowledge. The program provides home-based parenting skill education, advocacy, supportive housing and intensive case management.

Family Violence Outreach Prevention

The Family Violence Outreach Program works to increase the safety of child and adult victims of family violence and reduce the effects of traumatization by providing specialized outreach, therapeutic and support services to abused women and their children. Emphasis is placed on risk assessment and safety planning to protect children, prevent unnecessary removal of children and youth from their families and keep non-offending parents and children together whenever possible. Individual and group counseling, advocacy, referral to other services and case management to women in abusive relationships and their children and to sexually abused children and their family members are provided.

Integrated Family Violence Services

CCCC's IFVS focuses on restoring, repairing and healing family relationships through safety planning, parenting education, counseling and referrals. Its goals are to increase the safety of abused parents and children, reduce traumatization, help non-offending parents and children stabilize their lives after victimization and restore family relationships. It uses a woman-defined advocacy approach that respects the ability of each woman to make informed choices, and also employs dyad-based interventions focused on repairing, restoring and healing relationships. The combination of these approaches works to end the cycle of abuse and prevent future victimization for children.

Neighborhood Victim Advocacy Program

The Neighborhood Victim Advocacy Program began in 1996 and works to increase the safety of crime victims and help them stabilize their lives after experiencing trauma. It is a crisis intervention initiative that provides an array of victim services, primarily to domestic abuse survivors and also to victims of elder abuse, robbery, assault and hate and bias crimes. These services are coordinated with the New Haven Department of Police Services. Services include psycho-education, counseling, safety planning, assistance in filing victim compensation forms and obtaining restraining orders, court accompaniment, transportation and referral for other needed services.

New Haven Family Partnership

The New Haven Family Partnership works to end the cycle of homelessness by providing case management to help find housing and other needed community services, assessment of the family system, developmental and behavioral assessments of children and short-term counseling for children. Services are provided to families that are currently homeless or at risk of becoming homeless and who are coping with HIV/AIDS, mental illness or substance abuse. The Partnership is a collaboration between CCCC and Also/Cornerstone, Inc., The Connection, Inc. and New Haven Home Recovery.

Nurturing Families Network

CCCC's Nurturing Families Network provides home-based and group parenting education, developmental screening and case management services to first-time parents to prevent child abuse and neglect and improve health and developmental outcomes for children. NFN staff are trained and certified in the Parents As Teachers program. This curriculum-based early childhood parent education and family support program is designed for families from pregnancy through kindergarten to give parents the information and support they need to help their children develop optimally during the early years of life. Developmental screenings, parent education and family strengthening activities work to increase parental knowledge of early childhood development, improve parenting practices, provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues, increase children's school readiness and school success and prevent child abuse and neglect.

Parent Education Program

The Parent Education Program is designed to prevent child abuse and neglect and keep families together by providing home-based parent education, support, role modeling, family advocacy, referral and case management services to families. Parent Educators make weekly home visits to educate parents about child development, limit setting, behavior management, child safety and other related aspects of positive parenting and to strengthen parenting skills and to provide skill building in areas such as parent-child communication and daily living skills including household management and budgeting. Parent Educators act as role models, decrease parental isolation and link families to other needed services. Spanish speaking Parent Educators are always on staff to assist this growing population in the area.

The Parenting Support and Parental Rights Initiative

The Parenting Support and Parental Rights Initiative provides help to parents with psychiatric disabilities to educate parents about their parental rights, maintain custody of their children, help make informed choices around their children's care, obtain needed services, develop temporary guardianship plans and promote values of personal empowerment, family stability and recovery. Key program components include individualized, home-based services, parenting skill training, education about mental illness and symptom management, legal advice and advocacy, linkage to other needed community resources, group support and peer mentoring.

Teen Outreach Program

CCCC collaborates with Troup Middle School to implement the Teen Outreach Program, a science-based program model first developed in 1978 and shown to be highly effective in preventing risk factors that contribute to drop out rates, academic failure, teen pregnancy and other negative behaviors. TOP teens gather weekly throughout the school year for curriculum-guided discussions about relevant issues and making good decisions for the future, and they participate in regular community service learning and neighborhood improvement projects. The structured community service allows the students to become "help givers", develop positive and supportive relationships with adults and other peers and promotes a sense of purpose and healthy behavior and decision-making.

To make a referral or request more information, call (203) 624-2600 x300.