San Diego Youth Services

San Diego Youth Services is a non-profit organization founded in 1970. We were one of the nation’s first shelters for homeless youth. We have helped over 823,000 homeless, runaway, and vulnerable youth, and currently serve more than 14,000 youth annually across over 100 community locations. Our services offer safe places to live and long-term solutions through shelter, foster homes, community centers, and housing.

We offer prevention, early intervention, and treatment programs to help youth before they need higher levels of care or become homeless. These services include:

• Providing safe places to live and long-term housing solutions for youth experiencing homelessness (shelter, foster homes, community centers).
• Supporting foster families and adoptive families, and helping current and former foster youth develop independent living skills.
• Delivering prevention and intensive outpatient mental health services for children and families, including a mental health clinic.
• Assisting youth at risk of or who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking, and running a youth sexual and domestic violence prevention program.
• Offering comprehensive support for LGBTQ+ youth and their families (including a drop-in center), services for bullied youth in 7th-12th grade, and juvenile delinquency diversion and intervention programs.

We strive to meet basic needs, build positive connections, help youth develop life skills, and promote overall health and well-being.

Our mission is to empower youth to thrive by meeting their basic needs and providing lifelong skills for self-sufficiency and achieving their ambitions. Our vision is a world where all youth have equal opportunities to achieve their goals.

We believe every child deserves to reach their full potential. To achieve this, we focus on meeting basic needs, fostering positive connections, developing life skills, and promoting overall health and well-being.

San Diego Youth Services employs between 201 and 500 staff members. We are a mission-driven organization focused on empowering youth.

We prioritize staff development, offering various trainings in leadership, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and cultural competency. We also help staff with educational goals through a grant. Our employees are encouraged to make a direct, positive impact on San Diego’s youth.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and provide auxiliary aids and services to individuals with disabilities. We were a Finalist for the 2025 Workplace Excellence Awards and are a Kindness Certified Company for 2025.

We offer a range of employee benefits, including competitive nonprofit pay scaled to the San Diego cost of living. Employees receive paid time off and holidays. New hires accumulate 18 days of PTO annually, which can grow to 27 days with tenure. We also provide 14.5 holidays plus two full personal holidays annually. The company offers a 403b retirement savings plan with up to a 2% employer match, immediately available.

Our health benefits include affordable medical, dental, and vision plan options for full- and part-time employees, along with medical and dependent care flexible spending accounts. We also offer additional employee-paid insurance options covering life insurance, long-term disability, and accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D). Voluntary insurance choices include accident, critical illness, voluntary life, hospital indemnity, and short-term disability.

We offer employer-paid employee assistance, providing confidential mental health services 24 hours a day. We support career development through employer-paid internal and external professional training, and clinical licensure hours are available during work hours. Tenure awards include increasing PTO accruals for years of service and annual anniversary gifts. San Diego Youth Services is also a Public Service Loan Forgiveness Employer.