Breaking the Cycle. Building the Future.

For Jorgette, foster care was a generational cycle. “My grandmother and mother were in foster care, my sisters were in foster care,” she says. “It’s a repetition of bad choices.” She ended up in foster care herself and by 19, Jorgette was facing homelessness. Without parental figures or a strong support system, the cycle that shaped generations of her family was threatening to become her future. Then she found Olive Crest, where she experienced hope and found a purpose and direction for her life. Today, Jorgette has completed Olive Crest’s independence program, went on to UCLA to study linguistics and is now looking toward an even bigger future. “I’m thinking Stanford or Harvard,” she says, so she can help others who face the challenges she faced. For more than five decades, Olive Crest has worked to break cycles of child abuse, neglect, and family instability by addressing not only the immediate crisis, but the circumstances that created it.

“What makes Olive Crest unique is that we don’t just deal with the symptoms of neglect and abuse,” says Alex Viering, Executive Director, “We address the causes and eliminate them upstream.” Their holistic programs provide children with safety, counseling, education, life skills, housing, and supportive adults while equipping families with the tools they need to become stronger and healthier. “We want to prevent child abuse, but we also want to keep families together and make families strong,” says Lori Eastman, Regional Programs Director. “Our programs enhance the family unit as a whole.”

Providing Families a Safe Place. Transforming Lives in Crisis.

Sometimes all a family needs is a little time, a safe place, and someone willing to help. Olive Crest’s hosting program serves families facing a sudden crisis, such as a job loss, a medical emergency, a childcare gap, or family trauma, who need a short-term safe place for their children. The hosting program keeps children and families out of the child welfare system. Trained volunteers open their homes, giving parents the time and stability they need to get back on their feet. In June 2026 alone, Olive Crest provided nearly 600 hours of care, offering families an alternative to the traditional child welfare system. 

Olive Crest also operates several youth “drop-in” centers that serve as safe havens for youth in crisis and victims of exploitation. These safe havens provide immediate access to food, crisis stabilization, workshops, and transitional services. One center, located off Figueroa, is near a notorious sex trafficking corridor and places Olive Crest’s team directly where some of the most vulnerable young people are at the greatest risk.

“It’s happening in broad daylight, right before our eyes, and I think people just don’t want to see it,” says Viering. “They want to look away, but we want to step fully into it and help.”