The WIND Center

The WIND Center is the focal point of WIND's efforts to engage homeless youth and offer them the help necessary to escape the downward cycle of poverty and homelessness. The Center is open six days a week, serves over 12,000 meals a year, provides case management services to over 400 youth, and is equipped with showers, laundry facilities, kitchen, computers and space for activities. It is a safe place for homeless and street children to receive survival services, case management, counseling, life skills training, and referral.

• Basic Needs: The Center is a place where homeless and street youth can come to meet their basic needs, including meals, clothing, showers, laundry and other necessary personal care items. Often a hot meal may be the reason that a youth seeks services, but then that provides the opportunity to develop trust, a relationship, and encouragement to access our other services.
• Case management: While WIND services are voluntary and free, every youth must meet with a case manager and complete an intake assessment to learn about them and to determine why they are homeless or living on the streets. Case managers provide individual help to identify the barriers and service needs, crisis counseling, guidance, life skills services and referral to other community services. In addition, our case managers work closely with other service providers, Child Protective Services, the foster care system, schools, and parents and families to determine and provide the best possible outcome for the youth.
• Counseling: A proportion of the youth who rely on WIND have experienced extreme abuse and emotional trauma which has caused emotional pain and dysfunction. Through a grant with the Sacramento Children's Coalition, a licensed clinical psychologist and a licensed art therapist works directly with the youth and case managers to do assessments, develop service plans and case approaches, and assist in securing other treatment services.
• Life Skills Building: Life skills training is incorporated throughout our daily activities, and include some specific skills training, such as weekly cooking classes, computer lab, job preparation and employment assistance, substance abuse issues, parenting classes, girls and boys group, healthy recreation and physical fitness, and community field trips.