Orangewood Foundation

Orangewood Foundation was created in 1981 to build an emergency shelter for children from our community who were being abused. After the shelter was finished it was deeded to the County of Orange and we turned our attention to meeting the ongoing needs of vulnerable youth. For 37 years, Orangewood has supported youth who are living with foster parents, kindship families, or in group homes. Today, Orangewood is driven by its mission “to prepare foster and community youth to reach their greatest potential”. While we still maintain a focus on helping youth from foster care, we have broadened our scope to include youth who might never have been in formal foster care but are in great need our services (educationally at-risk youth, sex trafficking victims, and homeless young people). Today about 75% of our clients are from foster care. Our vision statement, “all youth are given the opportunity to thrive and prosper”, describes exactly what we aim to accomplish.

Far too many young people leave foster care without a home or adults to help them transition into independent living. They are unable to pay for college, find a job, or secure a safe place to live. They lack education, guidance and basic life skills. This is also true of non-foster youth who come from families plagued by poverty and homelessness. These young people are at high risk of tragic outcomes including homelessness, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, incarceration, and substance abuse.

To address these critical issues, our strategies involve four key service areas: Health & Wellness, Housing, Life Skills & Employment, and Education. Orangewood provides the comprehensive programs including: affordable housing, educational scholarships, mental health support, skill building workshops, a drop-in center (Project CHOICE) and safe housing for CSEC youth (Commercially Sexually Exploited Children), adult and peer mentors, and a resource center for homeless youth that provides home cooked meals, medical care, group and individual counseling, referrals to housing and jobs, and case management.

All of our programs have adopted what we call the "Orangewood Way", a strengths-based, trauma-informed, respectful way of viewing the young people that we serve as resourceful `and so much more than just their present circumstances. We believe that our strategies are fairly unique and a bit more comprehensive than many youth services agencies. We use a care model that is known among service providers as “low-threshold”. We do not require traumatized, hurting youth to immediately comply with a rule-oriented program. This approach doesn’t work in the long term. It often reinforces a belief in the youth that they cannot succeed, they are fundamentally flawed, and people cannot be trusted. We don’t want to re-traumatize an already frightened youth by setting them up to fail and feel rejected, but instead extend unconditional love and use a much more grace filled, forgiving approach. Youth can visit for a hot meal, a shower, or just to talk with a caring adult until they feel safe enough to request more solution-oriented help, such as housing. We have respect for the unique path each of our young clients is taking, and the time they need to build trust in us. Rather than try to direct their steps, we offer to accompany them, providing support and guidance on the way.

Orangewood has evolved into a respected leader among Southern California’s providers of direct services for vulnerable, at-risk youth. Orangewood is deeply grateful for a high level of community support and strong collaborative partnerships. Our capabilities are enhanced through relationships with the Orange County Social Services Agency, Orange County Department of Children and Family Services, the County Board of Supervisors, and other local agencies. Orangewood is a member of the Orange County Alliance for Children and Families, Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, Juvenile Branch Blue Ribbon Committee on services to Dependent and Delinquent Youth, the Foster Youth Outcome committee, and the Juvenile Justice Commission. Orangewood has been awarded the County’s only Independent Living Program contract every year since 1998.

Orangewood benefits from truly outstanding Volunteer support. Our volunteer base is made up of both dedicated individuals and corporate groups who provide grants, in-kind gifts, services and special event support. Without our volunteers, our influence in the community and ability to carry out our mission would be significantly diminished. Additionally, two auxiliaries, "44 Women", started by Susan Samueli, and "PALS", provide valuable, ongoing support.

Orangewood is led by a very strong Board of Directors made up of 43 community leaders. Our Board is very active, providing governance, strategic direction, supervision and fundraising, and is organized into eight regular committees: Program, Ambassador/Fund Development, Governance, Executive, Audit, Investment, Finance, and Marketing. Two additional committees meet only as needed, the Compensation Committee and Rising Tide Committee. The Board relies on program outcomes and data provided by program directors, as well as feedback from the youth we serve, in order to lead our strategic planning.

Every year, our team of dedicated staff and volunteers directly serve about 2,000 young people; this number includes the 500 students enrolled at Samueli Academy. At Orangewood Foundation, progress is part of our culture - both programmatically and organizationally. Even though we are an established organization, we don’t “rest on our laurels.” We constantly evolve and adapt our services to better address the needs of our community’s youth.

For twenty years, Orangewood produced the Conditions of Children Report for our county and continues to be a contributor to the document. Orangewood operated several Community Programs, including FaCT, from 1994 until 2016. During this time, significant progress was made in the prevention of child abuse through Family Resource Centers around the County. In 2016 Orangewood made the decision not to seek more community service contracts; we decided to focus on what we do best: providing direct services for vulnerable youth. In 2013 Orangewood opened Samueli Academy, a tuition-free, charter high school for foster youth and educationally at-risk teens. It is now an award-winning school with a long waiting list each year! In response to the high percentage of young women being trafficked who as children were in foster care, Orangewood opened The Lighthouse in 2016, a transitional housing program to support this specific population. In 2017, Orangewood was selected to receive a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the State of California to expand our onsite Resource Center to better serve the growing number of young adults in Orange County experiencing homelessness.

Here is what’s next: On May 2, 2019 we celebrated our ground-breaking ceremony for our residential program at Samueli Academy. This will offer a 5/2 model, so that youth can live on campus Monday through Friday and return home (with foster parents or a kindship family) every weekend. Another exciting development is that Samueli Academy will add grades seven and eight in 2020. This will allow many students to change the trajectory of their lives at an even earlier age; it is our goal to capture their interest and enthusiasm even before high school!