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OUR HISTORY
New Canaan Cares is a non-profit organization focused on promoting the health and well-being of youth, families and the community. CARES was founded by a group of concerned New Canaan parents in 1979, a time when public awareness of the wide-ranging risks of teenage drug and alcohol abuse was coming to a peak. A similarly-focused agency, MADD or Mothers Against Drunk Driving, was founded around the same time. The current CARES is the result of a merger between the original CARES and two predecessor organizations operating in New Canaan: TAACT or The Alcohol Awareness Committee Telephone, which operated a “hotline” for problems related to alcohol, and NCPDA or New Canaan Parents for Drug Awareness. From its inception, CARES recognized the need for a multi-level response to the issues surrounding drug and alcohol abuse. Consistent with our mission, the original CARES acronym stands for Community Awareness, Responsibility, Education, Services.
Over the years, New Canaan CARES has grown from a small, narrowly-focused organization into a broadly-focused, highly-responsive organization supported by a wide cross-section of community leaders and lead by a highly-qualified professional staff. The need for our services is greater than ever in a community of youth marked by excessive levels of stress, above-average incidence of alcohol abuse and other high-risk behaviors.
In response to these and other cultural trends, CARES is developing a wider set of tools and professionally managed programs to meet our mission. Specifically, we combine traditional prevention techniques with new approaches to reduce the underlying problems that lead to risky behaviors among youth. In addition, we work with youth to emphasize the benefit of strong communication skills and the importance of making positive choices. In response to input from our youth, we now offer regular programs on stress management, communication, eating disorders, sexual harassment, and other issues that affect decision-making and personal health choices. We also strive to promote strong, healthy families in our community by working continuously to enhance parenting skills, raise community awareness of important youth and family issues, and improve the overall physical, emotional and psychological health of community members of all ages.
Over 30 Years of Community Service
CARES has over 30 years of experience providing prevention services to K-12 grade students and their parents, as well as bringing in a wide array of outside guest speakers and offering prevention education seminars to the larger community. We have the unique ability to focus our attention on current issues that are impacting our community, such as over-programming our youth, bullying, aggression, sibling rivalry, drug experimentation, grief and loss, and domestic violence.
We are a well-recognized independent agency. Our parent network (Parent CARES) has strong ties to all public and private schools throughout the town. This broad-based youth and parent configuration provides strong links to other organizations within the town, including local churches, PTC/PFAs, Exchange Club, Youth Commission, Newcomers, Young Women’s League, National Charity League, League of Women Voters, New Canaan Community Foundation, United Way, New Canaan Sewing Group and each of our local nursery schools.
Service Area and Target Population
While most programs and services of CARES are open to the public and draw individuals throughout Fairfield County, some services are designed to meet the unique and changing needs of adults, adolescents and children in New Canaan. Specifically, we offer student programs at the kindergarten through 12th grade levels, with emphasis on middle and high school students. Our parent programs are designed to address the needs of family members and improve family dynamics, and our community programs provide rapid response to challenging issues that arise unexpectedly throughout the year. Our dynamic community programs are offered in addition to our regular programs and topics are determined as a result of phone requests and in collaboration with local community service providers.
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