Provides youth in crisis with a place for physical and emotional safety while assisting them in developing life skills that will enable them to make positive contributions in their communities. Space is limited to 10 youth at a time. Family reunification services are also available. Contracts with Wasco County Youth Services (WCYS) to offer community workshops for adults interested in additional support raising pre-teens and teens.

Youth Shelter offered at Youth Empowerment Shelter

Provides youth in crisis with a place for physical and emotional safety while assisting them in developing life skills that will enable them to make positive contributions in their communities.

Programs that provide emotional support, information and guidance for children and adolescents who have run away from home and for the entire family, if appropriate, with the objective of identifying and resolving the problems that prompted the youth to leave home and/or assisting the youth to formulate and implement a workable plan for his or her immediate future.

Runaway/Homeless Youth Counseling

Programs that teach skills that enable parents to deal constructively and consistently with a broad spectrum of child rearing problems which may include sibling rivalry; school behavior and performance; poor self-esteem; shyness; drug use; sexual promiscuity; and the whole range of negative, acting-out behaviors including whining, temper tantrums, disobedience, insolence and destructiveness. Some parenting skills development programs utilize a step-by-step approach for managing specific problems and may incorporate application at home of techniques that were discussed and practiced in the classroom setting. Other programs may offer participatory family workshops which provide opportunities for parents and children to learn and practice methods for dealing with one another under the guidance of a trained facilitator. Most training programs teach the parent a particular way of talking and relating to their children that reinforces positive behaviors and communication and decreases negative behaviors while supporting the development of a relationship that is built on fairness, mutual caring and respect.

Parenting Skills Classes

Programs that identify families with children in foster placement whose prospects for successful reunification are good, provide the array of supportive services needed by the family to attempt reunification, supervise visitation in the home by the child, oversee trial placement with the family and provide whatever home-based services are required to facilitate permanent reunification. Services may include mental health and substance abuse counseling, home management instruction, parenting skills development, stress management and tutoring.

Intensive Family Reunification Services

Programs that provide shelter and a safe place to sleep as well as access to food, medical care and other types of assistance for children and/or youth who have run away from or been pushed out of their homes, or who are acting out and at risk for abuse pending return to their own families or a suitable alternative placement. The most common causes for youth becoming homeless, in addition to being kicked out of their homes or running away, are being abandoned or neglected, experiencing financial hardship, aging out of foster care, conflicts related to their sexual orientation, having a substance use disorder or experiencing the death of a family member or guardian. Such facilities usually provide in-house individual, group and family counseling and the full range of other secondary services related to runaways and other homeless youth including referral to appropriate resources. Homeless youth are different than homeless adults because they often have not learned the essential life skills needed to live on their own such as how to drive or ride a bus, get a job or pay bills. Homeless youth are also more likely than other youth their age to experience mental illness, suffer poor health, drop out of school, and become involved with or victims of criminal activity, including being exploited, abused or even killed.

Youth Shelters

Coordinates a network of volunteers that care for children of parents experiencing a temporary crisis. 
Provides a safe alternative to child welfare custody.  Crises include short-term emergencies, such as hospitalization, or a longer-term crisis, such as drug abuse or homelessness. 
Volunteer families are extensively screened and supported, and biological parents maintain full custody while their children are in the program.  The ultimate goal is to support and strengthen biological families so they can become safe families for their own children. 
Host family volunteers are supervised by their area church, which in turn is supported by professional child care specialists. 
Children are matched with families in their own community whenever possible, and placements average from one day to three months.

Host Families offered by Olive Crest

Coordinates a network of volunteers that care for children of parents in crisis. Provides a safe alternative to child welfare custody.  Crises include short-term emergencies, such as hospitalization, or a longer-term crisis, such as drug abuse or homelessness.

Programs that provide temporary shelter/residential care for infants and children who are at risk for or who have experienced child abuse or neglect in the home or whose families are experiencing an emergency that makes it untenable for the child to remain in the home. Care is generally provided by licensed family child care homes that are available on a 24-hour basis when needed. Some providers are able to accommodate children to age 12 or 14 and will consider older children on a case-by-case basis, while others limit their services to very young children, generally from birth to age five or six.