CCYS Information

Our Mission - To promote the healthy development of youth and families Originally part of the YMCA, Capital City Youth Services began its commitment to children and families in 1975 when the ‘Someplace Else’ youth shelter was established. The shelter provided hot meals and a place for kids to stay when they had nowhere to turn. In 1993, Someplace Else separated from the YMCA and became Capital City Youth Services (CCYS). With a new name, a new location, and an expanded mission, CCYS began to address the underlying problems that often lead to children running away or experiencing crisis at home or school. Since we officially became CCYS in 1993, our programs have continued to grow, offering a continuum of services to youth and families in need. We kept our shelter program Someplace Else, and added a non-residential counseling program, Family Place. We opened a Transitional Living Program in December 2013 to serve older homeless youth, between the ages of 16 to 19, who need a support system to transition to adulthood successfully. We also have a street outreach program called Going Places, which works in parallel to our partnership with the National Safe Place program to identify youth on the street and offer support services to exit the street safely. All services and programs are offered to all eight counties of the Big Bend Area and are free and confidential. Primary goals of the agency include family preservation, homelessness prevention, delinquency prevention, and dependency prevention. CCYS works to alleviate the immediate problems of youth during runaway or other crisis situations, reunite runaway, transient and other youth in crisis with their families, strengthen family relationships, help parents and youth decide on future courses of action, prevent juvenile crime, and prevent domestic violence and abuse (often minimizing or eliminating the necessity of out-of-family home placement for children and youth).