Through targeted, compassionate, and effective early intervention services, We Care helps young children and their families reach their full potential, regardless of their abilities or circumstances.
Our vision is a community where young children achieve their full potential.
64 years ago, parents of children with developmental and cognitive disabilities founded We Care to address the lack of treatment options for their at-risk children. These parents understood the complex needs of their sons and daughters and forged an agency that has since evolved to address a broad range of developmental and mental health concerns – all while keeping focus on each child and family and their specific strengths.
Since then, We Care’s services have evolved and expanded to encompass a wide array of developmental, educational, and mental health programming. Our understanding of the true roots of social, emotional, and behavioral problems has grown along with the corresponding improvement in the science that guides us and in response, many of our programs have shifted focus to encompass our response to the impact of trauma related to neglect and family or community violence. The measured outcomes our clients experience support the value of these changes and today, thousands upon thousands of children and families have graduated from We Care’s programs with dramatically improved outcomes.
Research shows clearly that children who attend enriched preschool programs have better health, social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes than those who do not. Preschool helps address the high rate of school failure among children from economically disadvantaged families and the “achievement gap” between them and those from middle class and affluent households. Early educational preschool has unparalleled potential for closing this gap and promoting school success. Researchers have found that as early as second grade, the achievement gap between children from low-income families and more affluent families as measured by a standardized language-arts test is 32%. We Care is dedicated to impacting this deep inequity.
Children receiving We Care’s mental health services who exhibit behavioral and/or emotional concerns between the ages of three and five are embedded in our preschool classrooms and receive support from a Behavior Specialist who can help each child succeed through individualized and one-on-one interventions. Children in this program experience dramatic levels of improvement relative to similar children who receive no services. The vast majority of program graduates are able to “mainstream” into typical educational settings.
We Care also addresses the needs of toddlers with autism – or those at risk of autism – through play-based activities that facilitate developmental sequences similar to their typically developing peers. Through our developmentally focused and relationship-based approach, we help minimize the developmental delays associated with early autism and increase young children’s developmental growth in the cognitive, social-emotional, communication, fine, and gross motor areas.
Our programs create the strong foundation necessary to foster increasingly complex skills. Early experiences such as those provided by We Care create this foundation for lifelong learning and dramatically increase the probability of positive outcomes.
The at-risk children we serve are predominantly low-income and BIPOC children of families living in Contra Costa County. As a high percentage of Black (33%) and Latino children (24%) under six years old in Contra Costa County live with families who are below the Federal Poverty Level, our services reduce disparities for unserved and underserved children. We Care focuses on the children that need us most.
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