There were 42,485 child abuse and neglect reports made to the County of San Diego last year. Those reports represented 79,521 children \u2014 and those were just the cases reported.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1972, Home Start Inc. is a San Diego nonprofit with a mission statement of preventing and treating child abuse.<\/p>\n Home Start fulfills this mission by addressing conditions it says contribute to abusive or risky situations such as unsafe neighborhoods, lack of affordable housing, poverty, unsafe neighborhoods and unemployment.<\/p>\n Tancredi-Baese was a young girl when she saw some of her peers going down the wrong path and thought they needed positive influences to guide them in the right direction. That was when she decided she would follow a career in social work. After working in the field for 25 years, Tancredi-Baese joined Home Start in 2007 as the CEO.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren do even better when you work with their parents,\u201d Home Start CEO Laura A. Tancredi-Baese said. \u201cOur mission has been preventing child abuse and neglect and strengthening families against risk factors using services like education, interaction, early intervention and therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2012, Home Start Inc. was awarded a grant from donor Meg Jacobs of nearly $1.5 million \u2014 the largest grant they have received to this date. With the grant, Tancredi-Baese developed the Home Start Maternity Housing Program (MHP) \u2014 a social enterprise that provides revenue to Home Start programs. This led to the highlight of Tancredi-Baese\u2019s Home Start career \u2014 a thrift boutique in Normal Heights.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw an unmet need for transitioning young mothers who didn\u2019t have a safe or healthy place to live,\u201d Tancredi-Baese said. \u201cAbout half of the women in the program never graduated high school and don\u2019t have much experience with employment and have all kinds of trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n Women accepted into the program live in one of the three MHP residences in Uptown and work at the thrift boutique as sales associates. One of those women is Normal Heights resident Stacy Stevens.<\/p>\n Six years ago, Stevens was in a foster youth housing program when she attended a conference for foster youth in Sacramento, where she met Tancredi-Baese. Stevens didn\u2019t have any children at the time, but referred a lot of her friends she had met during foster care.<\/p>\n Then Stevens\u2019 circumstances changed.<\/p>\n \u201cI was still in the program and I had found a really good job and was doing really well,\u201d she said. \u201cI started dating a new guy and that went really well. Then all within a month, I got fired from my job, found out my boyfriend was married and found out I was pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after, Stevens found out her housing program was ending.<\/p>\n \u201cAll within a month of each other \u2014 like boom, boom, boom \u2014 things started to fall apart for me,\u201d she continued. \u201cSo, the day I found out I was pregnant, I got my referral in to Home Start.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevens was hit by a car, leaving her with physical pain which make it hard for her to work a steady job. She also had a high-risk pregnancy, leaving her unable to work until her son AJ was born.<\/p>\n \u201cI tell myself I had no choice, but the truth is I did have a choice. My choice was to either improve my life so I can be a part of my son\u2019s life and raise him myself, or go down the same road I was going down and have him end up in the foster system,\u201d Stevens said, adding she spent a majority of her life in that system.<\/p>\n Being accepted into the program and placed into housing was a streamlined process for Stevens.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in shock,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I was in the apartment by myself and all of my stuff was there that I realized I had a home again.\u201d<\/p>\n Since being in the program, Stevens said she has benefited from therapy and learned tools on how to manage anger issues stemmed from her experience in the foster care system.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up, I was always like \u2018I\u2019m going to be a teacher, I\u2019m going to be this, I\u2019m going to be that,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cBut I think I got to a point where I said, \u2018why bother?\u2019 Being in the foster system they always teach you the statistics. They say you\u2019re going to be pregnant before you\u2019re 18, you\u2019re going to drop out of school, you’re going to do this or that and all of these things. It\u2019s atrocious.\u201d<\/p>\n Having spent time in the foster care system and living at a group home, she said she saw her peers go off in different directions, with varying amounts of success. That said, she realizes the damaging effects that negative encouragement can have on youth. Because of this, she sees herself attending college to study social work and help other homeless youth.<\/p>\n In addition to the women involved in the program, volunteers also work at the thrift boutique including Normal Heights resident Ashley Rose \u2014 a college instructor and regular customer who began volunteering a few months ago.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the greatest things about volunteering here is getting to know the employees at Home Start and getting to know their stories and hear such different perspectives,\u201d Rose said. \u201cThey\u2019re all such wonderful people. It\u2019s really a wonderful organization that exists and it has been a really a great transition from being a customer to getting to know the behind the scenes of what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n Additional programs offered by Home Start include Community Services for Families (CSF), which promotes stable living environments for children and their parents through home-based parent education and case management services; community-based parent education classes; a peer support program for parents involved with Child Welfare Services and connections for families to community resources. Another is the First 5 Steps program, which provides in-home parent education to pregnant women and their families.<\/p>\n Home Start receives its funding from donations, grants and through fundraising efforts such as its annual Hallo-Wine Fall Festival, held every October in recognition of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. An expected 250\u2013300 people will turn out this year for an array of wines, hand-crafted beers and liquors, gourmet hors d\u2019oeuvres, live entertainment, a wine pull, a silent auction, and other festivities.<\/p>\n The 11th Annual Hallo-Wine Fall Festival will be held Saturday, Oct. 20 from 3\u20136 p.m. at the Burnham House in Bankers Hill, located at 3565 Seventh Ave. Tickets cost $65 and include a $10 Lyft voucher. Sponsorship opportunities are also available.<\/p>\n For more information about the organization and its programs, visit home-start.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Home](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Untitled-1.jpg\")
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boutique\u2019s interior. Most of the furniture in the store is repurposed. (Foto por Jess Winans)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"Home](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Home-Starts-Board-of-Directors.jpg\")