About Us
The Yolo County Children’s Alliance was established in 2002 by a resolution of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors as a way of addressing a number of community concerns that impact children and their families. For example, access to quality pediatric health care, childhood obesity, and child neglect and abuse. Our mission is to assess, coordinate and act to strengthen and support the continuum of prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation services and resources for children, youth and their families. The Yolo County Children's Alliance has a track record of helping families, particularly limited English speaking families, to access services.
The Children's Alliance is a 501(c)(3) organization and also an inter-agency collaborative, which coordinates needed family support services, convenes child and family advocates to solve community problems, and gathers and disseminates local information about the needs and the well-being of Yolo County families.
We are a known and trusted entity throughout Yolo County and have strong relationships with many local and government organizations including: City of Davis Child Care Resources and Referral (serving all of Yolo County), CommuniCare Health Centers, EMQ Families First Inc., First 5 Yolo Commission, Foster Kinship Care Education, Woodland United Way and the United Way California Capitol Region, Yolo County Board of Supervisors, Yolo County Department of Employment and Social Services (DESS), Yolo County Department of Health, Yolo County Foster Family Association, Yolo County Library, Yolo County Office of Education, Yolo Family Resource Center, Yolo Family Service Agency, and many others.
The three main programs of the Yolo County Children’s Alliance are:
The Children's Health Initiative
The goal of the Children’s Health Initiative is to maintain an efficient private/public system in Yolo County in which all children living at or below 300% of federal poverty level, ages birth through 18, have access to affordable health insurance coverage including dental health services, mental health services, vision services and prescription services. To this end, the Children’s Health Initiative coordinates an integrated countywide system of outreach and enrollment services to provide bi-lingual assistance to families whose children don’t have health insurance. Health Access Specialists educate families about health insurance and will walk them through the process of understanding their choices and then applying for various free and reduced cost health insurance plans. Health Access Specialist also provide ongoing assistance to make sure that families understand their benefits, use them appropriately and maintain coverage for their children.
Step by Step / Paso a Paso
Step By Step / Paso a Paso is an in-home visiting program based on the Healthy Families America model program, which has outcomes shown to prevent child abuse. The target population is pregnant and parenting families with babies up to three months of age who are parenting for the first time and who are overburdend or facing significant challenges in their lives. The goal of this culturally and linguistically competent program is to connect parents with the resources they need in order to become successful parents.
Foster Parent Recruitment and Retention
The Foster Parent Recruitment and Retention program is an effort to recruit and retain foster parents in Yolo County. In partnership with the Foster Kinship Care Education (FKCE) program and EMQ Families First, we are not only raising the awareness of the community about foster parenting, we are providing the resources and support that families need in order to become foster parents. Our goal is for more Yolo foster children to stay in Yolo County closer to their families, homes, schools and their local community.