132 Monterey County GIVES! 2026 mcgives.com Caring Circle Coastal Kids Home Care offers a range of health services and more to hundreds of children. By Sara Rubin T he bad news is that thousands of children are seriously ill. The good news is that Coastal Kids Home Care formed 20 years ago to help care for them, and has since expanded its range and services. The nonprofit now provides home-health services in Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties, and has a pending application with the California Department of Health Services to expand even further. “When I started, we had seven employees 14 years ago,” says Development Director Kelli Mullen Brown. “Today we have 207. All of our services are very demand-driven; we hire as we see a need.” Those needs have continued to focus on home-health care for young patients with complex medical conditions. It also includes bereavement support (the nonprofit absorbed the grief counseling organization Papillon Center in 2021, serving all ages). It includes mental health counseling, with bilingual counselors serving nearly 200 children ages 5 to 19 last year. And it includes social work and case management for families, as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy and more for young patients. In total, the group served 745 children in Monterey County in 2025. One of those children is Grant Sweeney, who was born prematurely at 26 weeks, and spent his first 19 months in the hospital at UCSF. Bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a severe lung disease, requires him to breathe with a ventilator. When he came home to Monterey in December 2025 for the first time, a full-time nurse, Itzel Navarro-Ortiz, was already set to start caring for him through Coastal Kids. (A night shift nurse has joined as well.) “We love them,” says Amber Rittenhouse, Sweeney’s mom. “They definitely feel like family.” The hope is that as he keeps getting stronger and his lungs grow, Sweeney, now 2, will breathe independently. Until then, the nonprofit provides care that allows his parents to work. “Without Coastal Kids, I don’t know where we would be,” Rittenhouse says. Many patients begin with Coastal Kids Home Care as infants, and some continue to be impacted by their pediatric diagnosis into adulthood. For that reason, nobody ages out. “Once a Coastal Kid, always a Coastal Kid,” Mullen Brown says. “We never discharge a patient.” Two-and-a-half-year-old Grant Sweeney receives full-time nursing care and additional home visits, including from physical therapist Sara Reis, through Coastal Kids Home Care. He breathes using a ventilator through a tracheostomy. DANIEL DREIFUSS SPOTLIGHT
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