Local Organizations Work to Change Childrens' Lives

This month and throughout the year, Olive Crest is encouraging individuals and organizations to play a role in making their communities a better place for children and families. By ensuring that parents have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to care for their children, children’s social and emotional well-being may be promoted, and child maltreatment within families and communities prevented. “This is an important time to celebrate the critical role that parents, families, and communities play in protecting our children,” stated Lois Verleur, who in 1973 founded Olive Crest, along with her husband, Dr. Donald Verleur. “Everyone needs to get involved and focus on ways to build and promote protective factors, so that we are able to prevent child abuse and promote optimal child development. Olive Crest over the years has enjoyed the long-standing support of the business community, and we could not have accomplished what we have in helping protect children without this vital support,” Verleur continued. An example of this business support is Olive Crest’s 24-year relationship with Tom Winterling and Toyota of Riverside employees, who have always been there for Olive Crest in the Riverside/Inland Empire area. Because of Winterling, his entire team at Toyota of Riverside and their customers, Olive Crest has been the recipient of well over $500,000 in support of its special events, programs and services. “We are delighted that Toyota of Riverside has been able to lend support to Olive Crest over the past 24 years,” stated Winterling. “On behalf of ownership, senior management, our employees, as well as our customers, we certainly look forward to many more years of involvement with this stellar organization. Toyota of Riverside has a vested interest in the safety of our children and in child abuse prevention,” Winterling continued. It all began in 1973 when founders Dr. Donald and Lois Verleur took in four teenage girls, which became one of the first group homes in Orange County. Olive Crest today continues to be dedicated to preventing child abuse, treating and educating at-risk children, and to preserving the family. Olive Crest serves nearly 2,000 children and their families each day throughout California, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest. The Verleurs’ vision since founding Olive Crest has transformed the lives of over 60,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children and their families. Intervention and treatment are needed. Olive Crest, with local offices in Riverside/Inland Empire, Coachella, and Palm Desert, works tirelessly to meet the individual needs of kids in crisis by providing safe homes, counseling, and education for both these youth and their parents. Their many innovative programs reflect their philosophy that strengthening the family is one of the most powerful ways to help heal these children. Olive Crest’s nurturing foster, adoptive, and volunteer homes, through their Safe Family Homes program, provides the foundation for children to feel safe – perhaps for the first time in their lives. This innovative program is a collaboration between area churches, volunteers, and child care professionals designed to support at-risk children and parents in need. Parents experiencing a temporary crisis can arrange for their children to stay with Safe Families volunteers while they address the issues that led to the instability in their lives. Children in this program are matched with families in their own community whenever possible, and placements average from one day to three months. Designed to extend and strengthen the community safety net for at-risk families, Safe Families is a positive alternative to the state child welfare system, allowing parents to work out their problems without having to worry about losing custody of their children. The program’s overall goal is to reunite children with their biological parent(s) in a home that is more stable and healthy, in part because of the contribution of the Safe Families intervention.