Casa de Luz is a family advocacy center contracted with the state Children, Youth and Families Department to provide community-based prevention, intervention and reunifi-cation services. Its goal is to prevent child abuse and maltreatment.

Casa de Luz can help with individual or family counseling, parenting education and strategies, life skills and sometimes accessing inpatient services.

Staff members do their best to avoid further traumatizing children by taking them from their home. If it’s necessary to take a child out of their home, they try to place the child with extended family or fictive kin, someone the parents or children already
have a strong rela-tionship with.