The Children and Youth Services (CAYS) Foundation was established in 2002 to provide safe, supportive residential care for young people in the Cayman Islands.
We operate dedicated homes for aged 12-18 who have been placed in our care through the Department of Children and Family Services and the Courts. Each young person comes to us with their own story, challenges, and strengths.
Our role is to provide more than just a place to stay. We offer a stable, nurturing environment where young people can begin to rebuild trust, develop life skills, and move toward a more positive future.
Our work is grounded in a therapeutic, outcomes-focused approach-one that recognises the impact of trauma and prioritises safety, consistency, and meaningful relationships.
Trauma Informed Care is an approach that recognizes the impact of past experiences on a young person’s behaviour and wellbeing. At CAYS, we ensure that all care is delivered in a safe, supportive, and understanding environment.
Our focus is on building trust, promoting emotional safety, and responding to each individual with empathy and respect. This approach is embedded across all our services to support healing and personal growth.
Trauma informed Care is defined as having three central pillars.
Young people have the right to feel a degree of physical, emotional and psychological safety. Unfortunately, this has often been missing from the early stages of their lives, resulting in them developing some of their own coping strategies in order to feel safe. The homes aim to provide this safety and support young people to develop new, more positive coping strategies.
Like all of us, young people need a degree of predictability in their lives. Many young people have come to us from situations where it has been difficult to know will happen next in their day-to-day lives. This lack of predictability promotes anxiety and, again, prompts young people to develop coping strategies to allow them to control their environment and make it more predictable. These are often not the most pro-social strategies. By creating an environment where there are good rhythms and routines in the homes, consistent responses from caring adults and clear expectations, young people can settle and begin to grow.
Relationships are central to everything we do at CAYS Foundation. It is important that our young people learn how to build and maintain healthy relationships, navigate the challenges of these and use them for their therapeutic value. Developing these skills will serve the young people well in their future relationships and in rebuilding and maitianing connections with family.
We apply Trauma Informed Care through:
Providing stability and consistency
Tailored care plans based on each young person’s needs
Compassionate, trauma-aware responses to behaviour
Access to emotional and psychological care
Encouraging confidence, resilience, and independence
