FSC Leads Orange County to end Family Homelessness: Through strong partnerships, our member organizations ideate, implement and advocate for innovations throughout the system, making the FSC the primary driver towards ending a family’s housing crisis.
FSC functions as the “System” supporting the direct service providers
who make up our member organizations.
In an effort to ensure system-wide best practices for families in Orange County, the FSC focus and goals are to ensure families are able to access family shelters, prevention and diversion services as well as housing resources in an equitable, timely and coordinated manner. We do this through our collaborative partnerships, ongoing support, training and technical assistance of best-practices that we provide to our member agencies.
Colette’s Children’s Home (CCH) is a nonprofit organization based in Huntington Beach, CA that has provided housing and supportive services to over 5,700 homeless women and children over the past 24 years. Their mission is to provide homeless single women and homeless mothers with children a safe home and nurturing environment where they obtain compassionate support and services needed to achieve self-sufficiency.
CCH began renting a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Huntington Beach in 1998, housing up to 6 homeless women and children each night. The agency now owns and operates 21 Emergency, Transitional, and permanent housing sites. They have the capacity to serve over 400 homeless single women, homeless mothers and children, and low-income individuals at any given point in time. Their shelters are in the cities of Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, Placentia, and Garden Grove.
To achieve the agency’s goal of self-sufficiency for each client, their program provides help for clients to reunify with their children, resolve legal and financial problems, maintain sobriety, secure gainful employment, and establish a budget and savings plan whereby 80% of their discretionary income is placed in a savings account to ensure the financial means to continued stability upon program graduation. They also support increased self-determination and self-sufficiency through Life Skills class meetings held once a week in the evenings. These classes address topics such as parenting, job skills, securing employment, financial budgeting and management, reunification with children, and substance abuse relapse prevention.
