About Us

 Our story

Youth Connections (YC) began as a 501(c) 3 non-profit group home for youth in 1976 in Johnson County.  Over the years as the needs of youth and families have changed in our communities YC has added more programs and services to serve these needs.  YC has expanded their service area as well by adding Morgan in 2000, Brown in 2017 and Marion County in 2021.

 Our programs focus on the prevention of juvenile delinquency, advocacy for youth, serving runaway and homeless youth, and community education.  In 1983 YC added a divorce education class for parents and children which is our Families in Transition program today. National Safe Place was added to our programming in 1988 as well as transitioning to our Host Homes program from our shelter.  We have over 200 Safe place locations today and continue to get more everyday. In 1998 the need for supervised visitation centers that were affordable was brought to the attention of YC and we quickly established this service to our center and have worked with local courts to keep this program going today.  We added after school programming in 2007 and have expanded this to include our summer camp. We work to keep this program free for parents and work on transportation needs for summer programs. In 2018 we added Family Mentoring with our Basic Needs assistance, Budgeting classes, Trauma informed care for parents classes, and many other offerings.