Crittenton’s Wraparound Services Annual Pampering Event

Crittenton Services for Children and Families (CSCF) Wraparound Services Program hosted the First Annual, “Looking Good, Feeling Good,” Event. The mission of this specialty event was to promote and encourage habits of wellness, increase awareness of available resources in the community for that can contribute to ones well-being, and inspire healthy choices in the home, ultimately leaving Crittenton Wraparound Services families looking and feeling good inside and out.

Long Beach City College (LBCC) Foster and Kinship Care Education Department collaborated with Crittenton to ensure that the event was a success by providing a safe and healthy environment for all those in attendance. In addition LBCC also provided a guest speaker to facilitate a parenting education group.

The group hosted by the LBCC representative gave parents the opportunity to discuss healthy and beneficial ways to manage stress and how to avoid caregiver burnout. Crittenton knows that our parents work hard to provide a nurturing and loving environment to their children, so learning how to deal with stress and learning how to avoid burnout was of huge assistance.

As an added bonus to the festive community based event, SHE ROCKS Life (SR), a non-profit community organization, solely catered to our youth needs. SHE ROCKS simultaneously facilitated groups by ages and team names: Team AWESOME BLOSSOM, Team UNSTOPPABLE, Team MARVELOUS and Team AMAZING to name a few.

The youth groups facilitated by SHE ROCKS were hosted with the intent of highlighting the positive attributions, of our youth in attendance, through discussions on self-esteem, leadership, and future careers.

Crittenton takes a strength-based approach when working with our clients and families and we were ecstatic to know that one of our newest community partners SHE ROCKS does the same. It was great to see our kids talking about what things made them special and what their true strengths were.

SHE ROCKS dedicated staff did a great job of working individually with some of our kids that have been shy and reserved in the past. They made them feel comfortable so that they could talk about their attributes, which in turn increased their self-esteem – one of the main goals of this community event.

An hour into the event, SHE ROCKS introduced a fitness coach to our families to facilitate a mid-day stretch and exercise. The fitness coach taught everyone that being able to apply healthy physical fitness to ones every day routine can alter a person’s attitude for the better, causing them to have an increase of energy throughout their day. The fitness coach spoke about eating healthy and how it provides everyone energy when you eat the right foods. It was wonderful to see adults and young children alike were up to the challenge of stretching and participating in this healthy event!

Los Angeles Barber College provided professional haircuts to all male guests in attendance. A haircut has the ability to boost a person’s self-esteem while giving individuals a greater confidence in their self-appearance.

With approximately 20 Los Angeles Barber College students on the job, the confidence levels of our young men and boys sure rose this day. It was wonderful to see our youth waiting in line for their free haircuts and then leaving with a huge smile.

Last but certainly not least, LBCC Make-Up and Cosmetology Program also stepped up to the challenge and provided free makeovers and make-up tutorials to our young ladies and women in attendance. Thanks to the LBCC glam squad all female guests in attendance walked away feeling good.

When families were done getting their haircuts and make-up done, they had the opportunity to take glamour shots by themselves and with their families courtesy of the Crittenton Wraparound Services team. Everyone enjoyed taking pictures with hats, glasses, coats, and the like.

By utilizing our community resources and businesses, we are happy to say that The Giant Grinder catered our event to feed Crittenton Wraparound Families that registered for the event. With a plethora of gourmet turkey, ham and vegetarian sandwiches, our clients were sure to satisfy their hunger.

For dessert we partnered with Diddy Riese Cookies, located in Westwood, Calif., where we were able to obtain a variety of freshly baked cookies and brownies. Our cookie dessert table turned the heads of many, leaving them happy and satisfied.

We were more than happy to see that roughly 250 clients and their family members took advantage of the First Annual “Looking Good, Feeling Good,” Event. Many of them walked away from the event with renewed energy and full of self-confidence

The event ended with a huge raffle where families were able to win spa kits for men and women, board games, beach kits, cooking kits, gift cards and many more prizes. All the prizes that were raffled are prizes to that help bring families together, whether its baking a cake or building a sand castle, the idea of was to help families share quality time together.

Overall, Crittenton’s Wraparound Services team feels that this event was successful because we helped our families feel at their best when at times due to financial difficulties; they are not able to access these services at all.

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Carolyn Kirkpatrick serves as a Resource Coordinator for the Crittenton Services for Children and Families Wraparound Services Program, and is stationed in the agency’s Los Angeles County offices. In this capacity she assists the Wraparound Services Program with a number of projects, including, special event set-up and event donor coordination. As a whole the Wraparound Services team is a community based program that can serve and is responsible for the mental health and social services needs of up-to 500 Los Angeles based families per year. The mission of our agency is to heal the wounds of abuse and neglect; strengthen families; and help troubled adolescents reach their full potential. Established and incorporated in 1966 Crittenton has a highly trained workforce operating 24 hours a day / 7 days a week providing comprehensive counseling, medical, and other support services to the clients in our care. We provide a full array of residential, in-home, community based, wraparound, mental health, foster care, and adoption services with a service planning area throughout Southern California that covers Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego Counties.

Visit www.crittentonsocal.org  to learn about our programs and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and Flickr.