Success and Self-Sufficiency for Children, Families and Community is what we strive for at Ruth Dykeman Children's Center. Our ability to fulfill this mission is based primarily on the people we hire - the dedicated staff that are driven by a desire to make a difference in a child's life! RDCC places high value on our employees and provides opportunities to develop skills, achieve goals and take the next step toward a successful future.
We look for people who are passionate, innovative, dedicated to our mission and value teamwork and integrity. If that sounds like you, Ruth Dykeman Children's Center is the place for you! RDCC values diversity in the workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity and affirmative action. People with diverse cultural experiences and who reflect the populations served are encouraged to apply.
Description
For 88 years, Ruth Dykeman Children's Center (RDCC) has served the needs of the community through its residential, home and community-based services. Helping children, families, and communities achieve success and self-sufficiency is the primary goal of each of the programs RDCC offers.
In 1921, Judge King Dykeman saw many young women who needed support outside the home but there were no appropriate services for them. To address this problem, he founded Ruth School for Girls, which later became Ruth Dykeman Children's Center. Originally, the agency was located in Seattle's Ravenna district but moved to its present eight and a half acre campus on the shore of Lake Burien in 1931. Over the next 60 years, the agency slowly expanded its residential programs to serve boys and girls, ages 6 to seventeen, with serious behavioral, emotional and psychological disturbances. This is the same population being served today in the Behavioral Rehabilitation Services program.
Highline Youth and Family Services merged with RDCC in 1990, combining the strengths of the two community-based organizations and adding an array of prevention, education, intervention and treatment services to children and families in South King County. Today, the RDCC Youth and Family Services (link) branch offers parenting and anger management classes, alcohol and other drug assessment and treatment, individual, family and group counseling and many other mission-focused services. 1995 marked RDCC's first capital campaign for the Cedar building. This building housed the adolescent girls residential treatment program until 2009 when RDCC transitioned its services to include assessment treatment for children. In 2001, RDCC embarked on another capital campaign, this time for the Madrona house which is home to the children's program on campus. The Specialized Independent Living Services program began in 2002 to close the gap in services for adolescent girls transitioning out of foster care who do not have the skills necessary to live independently successfully. Cultural Competency
As a part of RDCC's commitment to organizational cultural competency, RDCC participated in a Cultural Competency Assessment through Reinvesting in Youth in 2005. This resulted in the agency creating a Cultural Competency Initiative Team that provides oversight to the organization's cultural competency work plan. The Cultural Competency Initiative Team has an ongoing work plan to use a cultural competency lens to review agency policies, procedures, hiring and employee evaluation practices as well as customer access to services. Another part of this Initiative is a commitment to provide all staff with regular trainings centered on cultural competency. To date, over 20 key staff members have participated in the "Undoing Institutional Racism" training and most current employees have participated in the "Race the Power of an Illusion" training.
Through a journey that has no ending point, the Center intends to build its capacity to be an ever more effective agent of social change on behalf of and with the children, families, and communities it serves.
