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History
In the mid-1980s, a group of Ventura County citizens became concerned about the lack of services for children removed from home by Child Protective Services. That concern evolved into a vision for a campus-based residential center offering a wide range of assessment, crisis care, medical and educational services for these abused and neglected children. The vision, in turn, spawned a creative public/private partnership that raised the $10 million needed to build Casa Pacifica.
In 1993 while the campus was under construction, the Casa Pacifica steering committee - comprised of members of both the public and private sectors - focused on how to configure and finance an appropriate set of services for children requiring emergency shelter care and assessment. Through an extensive data analysis another priority population surfaced - children requiring out-of-home placement who were being sent around the state because of a lack of local services. In response to this new information a strong consensus emerged - Casa Pacifica should be designed to meet the needs of this second priority population, in addition to providing services to children requiring emergency shelter care. Consequently, a residential treatment program and non-public, special education school were added to the program mix.
Casa Pacifica opened its doors to abused, neglected and severely emotionally disturbed children in the summer of 1994. During the first two years of operation, efforts focused on program implementation and on sorting out the roles of all participants in this unique public/private partnership. In 1996 the non-public school opened its doors to day students- most of whom were graduates of the residential treatment program but who still required a self-contained, special education school environment. In 1998 the "day school" program was expanded to incorporate an after-school component, in-home services, and family interventions including a parent support group. Meanwhile, the crisis care program (emergency shelter) was reconfigured to better segregate and supervise children by gender and age. Capital construction costs to accomplish this goal were almost $1 million.Today, Casa Pacifica's programs and services continue to expand. Children in the residential treatment program are placed by several Southern California counties, day students come from school districts throughout Ventura County, we have opened offices in two locations in Santa Barbara County to provide in-home therapeutic behavioral services, community based services combined now comprise one-third of Casa Pacifica's annual budget, and we have become a training center for professionals from around the region who wish to keep abreast of the latest interventions and therapeutic techniques.