Colettes Children Home Inc

Our mission at CCH is to provide homeless single women and homeless mothers with children a safe and nurturing environment where they obtain the compassionate support and services needed to achieve self-sufficiency. 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.

CCH is a California Public Benefit Corporation founded in 1998 to address the needs of homeless women with children and homeless single women in Orange County. Our core housing programs include our Emergency Shelter Program which provides shelter and services for up to 90 days, our Transitional Housing Program which provides shelter and supportive services for an average 5 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. CCH does not base program eligibility and entry on considerations of income, employment, transportation, education, cultural beliefs, criminal record, parole status, or similar factors. The primary requirements are homelessness and testing negative from drugs and alcohol at the time of interview. To remain in our program for its full duration, our adult clients must maintain sobriety, follow their individual service plans, and become gainfully employed.   

Our target population is homeless single women and homeless mothers with children. Our clients are those considered the hardest to serve and include criminal offenders, with a history of incarceration, who are on probation or parole, and are addicts, alcoholics, victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, attending drug court or family court, are unemployed, with low or no income, no transportation, and no support system. They have limited or no formal higher education with limited or no viable employment skills. They are homeless single female head of households who benefit from stable housing in a structured environment providing intensive intervention, direction, guidance, motivation, and accountability. Having provided safe shelter and supportive services to the homeless in our community for 25 years, we know that a shelter is never a replacement for a home; however, our homeless housing intervention programs provide needed support to those who have the highest housing stability barriers while seeking permanent housing solutions.

Our commitment to our clients and to our community is to provide short term shelter and stabilization services that seeks to obtain long term housing in the most cost effective and efficient manner, being ever aware of the need to be good stewards of public funding. Our goal is for the women we house and serve to become self-sufficient, by obtaining full time gainful employment and transition from homelessness to stable and independent housing.   

CCH has a 26 year history of providing homeless housing intervention programs along with supportive services to over 6,100 homeless women and children throughout Orange County. CCH began as a grassroots organization, founded in November 1998 by renting a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Huntington Beach, housing up to 6 homeless women and children each night. The agency now owns and operates 21 emergency, transitional, and permanent housing sites. We have the capacity to serve over 400 homeless single women, homeless mothers and children, and low-income individuals at any given point in time. Our shelters are located in the cities of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Anaheim and Placentia.

The need for our services cannot be overstated. In 2023, CCH received 4,085 requests from homeless women and children seeking housing and supportive services and were able to provide services to 254 women and children. We need your support to house and serve more homeless women and children.

Colette's Children's Home provides housing and supportive services to homeless women and children throughout Orange County. Our 21 sites are located in the cities of Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Placentia.

CCH is a unique organization.  We serve a very high-risk population, homeless mothers with children. Over 85% of the women we serve have 3 or more concurrent high-risk issues.  We work with homeless mothers who suffer from substance abuse, economic hardship, domestic violence, alcoholism, felony convictions and have no family support.  We also serve parents who have older teenage children.  One of our main challenges is to develop workforce housing where our clients are not merely surviving but thriving. We believe we are making a huge positive impact in our community which we believe will also impact future generations. I would like for you to see the work we do first hand. I would also like to take the opportunity to speak with you and share more of how we are changing our community one person at a time. Please call me anytime at our office 714 596-1380 ex 230. Thank you for caring and I look forward to hearing from you.

In 2023, CCH received 4,085 requests from homeless women and children seeking housing and supportive services and we were able to provide services to 254 women and children. This is approximately 6% of the requests we received. We are continuously trying to expand our ability to house and serve more homeless women and children.