The purpose of the Bay Area Crisis Nursery is to prevent abuse and neglect of children by providing support to families who are in stress or crisis. Their primary service is providing a warm, loving, homelike environment for children birth through five years of age by offering 24 hour residential care.

The Bay Area Crisis Nursery (BACN) was started in 1981 by Sister Ann Weltz. Sister Ann believed that child abuse and neglect need not ever occur if children had a safe haven when their parents temporarily couldn't cope. As a teacher in two very different economic areas in the San Francisco Bay Area, Lafayette/Orinda and West Oakland, Sister Ann noticed that families in both areas had crises and stresses that rendered them temporarily unable to cope with caring for their children. They couldn't focus on solving the problem and adequately care for their children at the same time. Sister Ann discovered the crisis nursery model for tackling this issue when she worked for a summer at Casa De Los Ninos in Tucson, Arizona. Determined to bring the same program to California, she finished one more year of teaching and returned to Casa de los Ninos. After two years, she returned to the Bay Area and began knocking on doors looking for a house and support for the program. She found a house in Concord that could pass all the necessary inspections and raised over $300,000 to start the Nursery. From its first admission in 1981 BACN has grown to over 1,000 admissions annually, with two homes for children and a budget over $900,000.

To learn more, please visit the Bay Area Crisis Nursery Website.