Who Are We

Since 2004, our agency and dedicated CASA program volunteers have advocated for abused and neglected foster children, guided by the belief that all children deserve safe, loving and permanent homes. Since 2017, we have also facilitated a trauma-informed summer camp program benefiting local children exposed to domestic violence, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, or other forms of family trauma.

Our agency was founded to support and advocate for foster children, and we maintain that commitment today. But as the summer camp program has continued to grow, our eyes have been opened to the great need for services for trauma-exposed and at-risk youth outside of the foster care system as well.

So we decided to make a change.

On October 1, 2019, our agency changed its name from CASA of Siskiyou County to Youth Empowerment Siskiyou and expanded our mission to be able to serve any youth age 0-25 who has been exposed to trauma, is in the foster care system or is at-risk.

During this time of transition, we sought guidance from other agencies in our community asking, “What would you like to see from us? How can we better serve our community?” What we heard in reply was that there was a need to serve all of our community’s trauma-exposed youth through a variety of programs supporting children and families outside of Court system involvement.

Our experience has been that even in the best-case scenarios, our children need more help than what the CASA program can provide alone. We want to broaden the services we provide, as well as who has access to these programs. We are confident that restructuring our agency will strengthen our CASA and summer camp programs, and also allow us to build new programs serving our community’s at-risk youth in the years to come.

Feedback from the community about the rebranding is welcome. Please contact us with any questions, compliments, suggestions, or concerns.