About Us
Our Founder
After losing her mother in a car accident Olivia spent two years in the foster care system and later became a teen mom without the support she needed.
For over 50 years, she has served as a second mother to many - offering her home, her heart, and her faith as a source of healing for pregnant teens and others. Now, she is expanding that passion by creating a Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Treatment Program (STRTP) for pregnant teens known as foster, adolescent Pregnant and Parenting Minors and Nonminor Dependents. .
Our Foundational Staff
My daughter and I have a combined 80 years of direct experience in early childhood education, school psychology, neurodevelopment, and clinical counseling with many of those we positively impacted are primarily in there 20s, 30s, and 40s. With a goal to do the same for serves pregnant and parenting youth ages 13–18, alongside their infants and children ages 0–3 within the Inland Empire (i.e. the West Valley or Riverside),
Strategic Talent Acquisition & Screening
To mitigate industry-wide turnover and maintain a stable, regulated setting, Serenity Home for Girls utilizes a rigorous multi-tiered screening process for all potential direct-care and clinical staff.
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Mission Alignment: Candidates are screened via structured behavioral interviews to ensure strict alignment with our trauma-informed, neurodevelopmental mission and values.
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Background Clearances: Comprehensive background checks, including DOJ, FBI, Child Abuse Central Index (CACI), and health clearances, are completed prior to any direct youth contact.
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Experience Verification: Preference is given to individuals with documented experience in adolescent maternity, foster care systems, or behavioral health settings.
The Neurodevelopmental Maternity Behavioral Framework
Our comprehensive family-support ecosystem is built upon three interconnected pillars, ensuring that dependable infant care is the foundation that unlocks a mother's access to healing, education, and independence maternal confidence, and healthy relationships. As we engage in Compounded Trauma Avoidance with a stable, loving environment rooted in healing, life skills, education, and community care.
Core Philosophy: The Shift from Compliance to Co-Regulation
Serenity Home for Girls rejects punitive behavioral models that exacerbate survival responses. Instead, our behavioral framework uses PBIS, SEL, and UDL to accommodate the cognitive, hormonal, and neurological realities of adolescent parenthood.
We recognize that behavioral disruptions are frequently symptoms of underlying, unaddressed factors, including:
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Systemic Medical Trauma: Hyper-vigilance or avoidance stemming from discriminatory, dismissive, or institutionalized experiences during prenatal and pediatric medical visits.
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Perinatal & Postpartum Mood Disorders: Physiological anxiety, depression, and exhaustion that impair emotional regulation.
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Interpersonal & Systemic Stress: Fragmented or high-conflict dynamics with infants' fathers, biological parents, or child welfare systems.
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Unmet Developmental Milestones: Parallel developmental tracking, where the adolescent mother is navigating her own unmet teenage milestones while simultaneously managing her infant’s early childhood milestones.