About Us
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.Ruth Dykeman and Navos Working Together
Most recently we are excited to announce our merger with Navos, one of the largest mental health providers in our area. After planning and consideration by the agency's Board of Directors and senior staff, Ruth Dykeman Children's Center (RDCC) made the decision to join with Navos. Operating as a single and larger organization will create efficiencies as Navos has earned a reputation as a well-administered organization with strong financial management and support services, according to Dykeman board members. Jim Dykeman, grandson of the founder, Judge King Dykeman and a long time RDCC Board member, endorsed the agreement to combine agencies, commenting, "I am very pleased about this new relationship with Navos. By integrating our resources during these difficult economic times, RDCC will have additional capabilities to provide programs and services to the more vulnerable children in our community. Following the merger, the RDCC campus by Lake Burien will retain the Ruth Dykeman name and will continue offering its accredited residential treatment programs for youth and adolescents. RDCC outpatient counseling services will become part of NAVOS' Child and Family Services department and will continue to be offered on the Ruth Dykeman campus. Please direct any inquiries about the merger to Alice Braverman at 206-933-7032.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.
