Established in 2002, the Yolo County Children’s Alliance (YCCA) is a 501(c)(3) organization and an inter-agency collaborative that 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 wellbeing of Yolo County families.

YCCA supports families to protect and empower our children. We help families, particularly non-English speaking families, access services, learn valuable parenting skills, and find support. We do this through family strengthening programs which focus on the following areas: 1) family support, 2) parent education, and 3) community collaboration and advocacy.

The below vision and mission statement help drive our organization’s daily activities to ensure the communities we serve receive the best in services.

Our Mission

YCCA strengthens communities by building resiliency in youth, adults, and families and by creating networks of support.

Our Vision

Communities where children, adults, and families thrive.

Our Work

A Family Strengthening Approach

Strategically, all our programs align with and are informed by the Strengthening Families™ Framework, a research-informed approach to increasing family strengths, enhancing child development, and reducing child abuse and neglect. Created by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, it focuses on building 5 Protective Factors in families:

• Parental Resilience
• Social Connections
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development
• Concrete Support in Times of Need
• Social and Emotional Competence of Children

All YCCA programs support and strengthen families in at least one of these areas. For example,

• All of our programs support parental resilience by making parents feel valued, acknowledged, and supported in every interaction we have with them. We also spend a lot of time focusing on parental resilience with our Step by Step/Paso a Paso home visiting and Nurturing Parenting programs.
• We promote social connections for parents and youth with programs like our Nurturing Parenting, Play School Education, and Youth Promotores programs.
• By providing food, resources and referrals, Voluntary Income Tax Assistance, enrolling people in health insurance and CalFresh, and providing child care payments through our CalWORKS Child Care Subsidy program, we help families get important concrete supports in times of need.
• Parents learn about parenting and child development and how to support children’s social and emotional competence through our Step by Step/Paso a Paso home visiting, Play School Education, Developmental Screening, Nurturing Parenting, and Period of PURPLE Crying outreach programs.

In addition, our Parenting Guides are designed to support Strengthening Families Framework protective factors.

We also work directly with family-serving providers to provide information about this Framework and integrate these protective factors into their work with families:

• YCCA coordinates a countywide coalition composed of county nonprofits, government agencies, and other family-serving organizations named the Yolo Family Strengthening Network. This group meets regularly to share information and support other’s efforts toward integrating the protective factors in their own programs and preventing child abuse and neglect.
• YCCA also leads the Yolo County Child Abuse Prevention Council, which coordinates the community’s efforts to prevent and respond to child abuse and neglect.

For more information about Child Abuse Prevention, click HERE.

Areas We Serve

Yolo County Children’s Alliance serves all of Yolo County including Davis, Woodland, Clarksburg, West Sacramento, and the Capay Valley.