CAMARILLO : Group Seeks Funds for Children’s Home

A nonprofit group is launching one of Ventura County’s largest fund-raising efforts this month in an effort to raise $10 million to build a crisis care home for abused children.

Organizers hope to break ground this summer on more than 22 acres of land adjacent to Camarillo State Hospital for the home that could handle 85 physically or sexually abused children, said Jeff Hass, president of Casa Pacifica in Oxnard. The crisis home will include a school, a library and an administrative building, he said.

Casa Pacifica began in 1984 as a branch of the Youth Connection Resource Project, which Ventura County Superior Court Judge Joe Hadden and other professionals started in the early 1980s by donating social services to needy children.

“We’re not talking about kids who have missed a meal,” said Hadden, who often came into contact with abused children when he presided in juvenile court.

So far the organization has collected nearly $7 million toward the project, including $4.25 million from the county government and donations from the Professional Golfers’ Assn., developer David Murdock and the Kiwanis Club, Hass said.

A centralized facility where children can go to school and receive medical treatment should provide the short-term care that foster parents cannot offer and help rehabilitate an estimated 60 children abused in the county each month, Hass said.

The home will accept children ranging from infants to 18-year-olds for up to three months, he said.