Community Action Organization of Erie County (CAO)

CAO Head Start (HS) and Early Head Start (EHS) contributes to the well-being and success of 1,080 HS and 205 EHS in Erie County, 200 HS slots for Niagara county, and the program works collaboratively with ten (13) day care providers supporting one hundred and ninety (225) infants/toddlers. We are working on collaborating with other day care providers as well for the upcoming years. 12% of the HS/EHS openings are reserved for children with disabilities. CAO also partners with Early Head Start Childcare Partnerships to service approximately 160 preschoolers at 7 locations. We have over 31 education agreements and over 90 collaborations and partnerships. Our mission is to provide exemplary comprehensive early childhood services to our children and families in cooperative, collaborative, and nurturing environments.

The CAO Drug Abuse, Research and Treatment Program (DART) currently serves 565 consumers in our outpatient opiate treatment program. The clients attend our clinic daily at which time they receive medication, methadone that assists in the development and maintenance of their recovery from opiate dependence. Clients are also required to attend weekly individual sessions with their assigned counselor as well as group therapy, whose goals are to identify the antecedents to addiction and develop and monitor the effectiveness of their recovery plans. During this period the DART program conducted 164,969 dispensing and approximately 36,000 clinical episodes of care.

Community Services Block Grant - The CAO is a community based, citizen driven organization that provides essential health & human services, educational and training programs to low-income residents across Erie County, NY with extensive experience in site management, crisis and emergency services, youth and family development, food pantry distributions, employment & training, reporting to funding sources and creating and maintaining vital partnerships within the community. On average we serve over 37,000 individuals and over 40,000 families at over 7 sites annually.