San Diego County CA— The Rest Haven Children’s Health Fund, an endowment fund to assist children in San Diego and Imperial Counties with health-related needs, has awarded $23,695 to the San Diego Center for Children. The funding will allow the Center to purchase new sensory and therapeutic assessment tools that will enhance the Center’s ability to provide individually-appropriate treatment for each youth served. The Center provides evidence-based therapeutic, educational, foster care and transition services to children and families struggling with mental, emotional and behavioral disorders. With eight program sites and community-based services within hundreds of homes and schools across San Diego County, the Center empowers more than 1,000 people every day.
According to Moisés Barón, Ph.D., President and CEO of the San Diego Center for Children, more than 105,000 children and teens in San Diego County suffer from a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder, yet only 20 percent of them get the help they need. This lack of care leaves many feeling displaced, others feeling hopeless and in disbelief that they have a bright future, and too many at risk of developing more serious problems as they become adults.
“In the past year, across all our programs, the Center saw 1,544 children and teens. However, we worked with 8,318 individuals by way of parents, caretakers, siblings and other family members relevant to the successful treatment and care of each child. This grant will provide our direct care staff access to the leading standard of therapeutic assessment tools, so that we can more effectively understand the root of a youth’s challenges before beginning treatment,” said Barón.
The majority of the funding will be used to purchase sensory equipment required to create the ideal therapeutic treatment environment within three new multi-sensory rooms on the Center’s main 12-acre campus in Linda Vista.
“The Center has been using multi-sensory therapy with the children it serves for several years,” Barón added. “These rooms are critical to teaching essential coping and self-regulation skills to children and teens with mental, emotional and behavioral disorders. This expansion will increase both the accessibility and the effectiveness of that mode of treatment and will allow us to provide the finest evidence-based, multi-sensory treatment options for every child. It will also enable us to serve even more children in the future, as demand for our Academy and Residential Treatment Program continues to grow.”