Mission Statement

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.

Vision Statement

Our vision is a community where young children achieve their full potential.

Who We Are

We Care Services for Children was founded 62 years ago in Contra Costa County, California, by parents of children with developmental and cognitive disabilities in response to a lack of appropriate services in their community.  These parents understood the unique and complex needs of at-risk children and forged an agency that has since evolved to address a wide range of developmental and mental health concerns – all while keeping focus on each family and its specific strengths. 

Today, we support the unique mental health, developmental, and educational needs of disadvantaged children up to age 5 through an array of effective, research-based therapies. Embedded in our programs are developmentally, linguistically, and culturally appropriate activities helping provide each child with the best possible start to his or her life.

Why Our Work Matters

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.

Children and Families Affected

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.