Children's
Collaborative Action Team
(CCAT)

The San Mateo County
Child Abuse Prevention Council

History

CCAT began its organizational life in 1988, when it was formed as an adjunct to the Children's Executive Council (CEC). CEC itself was created in 1988 under the leadership of Supervisor Mary Griffin, who dedicated her political career to the children of San Mateo County, and Judge Frank Piombo, who at the time presided over the Juvenile Court. San Mateo County was one of many California counties that brought together the heads of child-serving agencies to better coordinate their activities to ensure that children and families would have the most effective service delivery system possible.

The CEC was first convened by Judge Piombo but sustained for many years by Supervisor Griffin, until her retirement from the Board of Supervisors. In addition to Supervisor Griffin and the Judge, the original CEC members were the County Manager, the Director of Human Services, the Director of Health Services, the Chief Probation Officer, the District Attorney, the County Counsel, the Superintendent of the County Office of Education, the Sheriff, and other county officials; over the years membership was augmented by the addition of city representatives and local school board representatives.
Because CEC was composed of policy makers whose job was defined in terms of setting policy direction for the county's child serving agencies an offshoot called the Children's Executive Council Action Team (CECAT) was formed to find ways to implement those policy directions. From the beginning CECAT sought to create programs that would enhance the county's system of services for children and families. The most significant accomplishments of CECAT were the funding and creation of the Family Visitation Center that is operated by the Family Services Agency, and bringing agencies together to create the Safe Center (now the Keller Center) at San Mateo County General Hospital.

Several years ago many of the members of CEC began meeting with other public officials, private agency Executive Directors under the auspices of the Peninsula Community Foundation to blend public and private resources to improve the overall system of services to children and families in San Mateo County. This organization, known as the Peninsula Partnership for Children, Youth and Families, maintained most of the objectives of CEC, and so it was decided that CEC should be phased out so that energies could be concentrated in the more broadly focused Peninsula Partnership agenda.
CECAT, however, had maintained its own focus in providing both an information sharing forum for service providers and a place to evaluate and support new initiatives. Over the years CECAT had reached out to many of the private community based organizations providing services in our county and had also merged with the Children and Youth System of Care Committee. Despite the phasing out of CEC, CECAT decided to continue its approach to coordinating services at the delivery level and became CCAT (the Children's Collaborative Action Team).

CCAT has continued its uninterrupted work on behalf of the children and families in our community. One of the most important activities that CECAT undertook near the end of CEC's organizational life was initiating the work of the Children's Report, and as CECAT transformed itself into CCAT it helped guide this important new San Mateo County activity to its full fruition.
CCAT has taken on many new and important functions over the past couple of years, including requesting the Board of Supervisors to designate it as the Child Abuse Prevention Council for San Mateo County. In this role CCAT is responsible for the distribution of several child abuse prevention funding sources through a triennial RFP process.

CCAT works to continuously redefine its role in coordinating and improving services to our community and is committed to doing so as long as there are families and children in San Mateo County who can benefit from our concentrated energies. In 2001 CCAT brought together all providers of adolescent services in the County to create a sub committee called ACAT (Adolescent Collaborative Action Team). ACAT worked actively for nearly 10 years in an effort to work in partnership with the community to provide all adolescents in San Mateo County with the support, services and programs needed to achieve self-sufficiency and a positive transition to a healthy, responsible and productive adult life. ACAT’s accomplishments include the creation of the Mentoring Coalition of San Mateo County which serves to join all mentoring organizations in San Mateo in a network of shared resources, trainings and public awareness about the need for caring adult mentors.