Listen and understand
Better understand what a young person is telling you and what they may need next.
A new approach to supporting young people
Think of a young person you care about.
They may be struggling at school, having trouble speaking up for themselves, feeling overwhelmed, or simply needing the people around them to understand what would actually help.
CAPES is for the adults young people turn to—including coaches, mentors, educators, extended learning staff, youth-development professionals, and caregivers. We prepare you to support K–12 young people across public, private, charter, and homeschool settings with practical skills that keep their voice, choices, and growing independence at the center.
Our training also provides deeper understanding and practical approaches for supporting students whose mental health, neurodevelopmental, learning, or disability-related needs may shape how they learn, communicate, regulate emotions, build relationships, and participate.
Young people don't need to be redesigned. The systems that support them do.
The Problem
Today's support systems weren't designed to work together.
A young person may have support in many parts of their life. The problem is that those supports are often disconnected.
A caregiver may see one part of the picture. A teacher may see another. A coach, mentor, facilitator, or program professional may see something else. Each person may be doing good work.
But the young person is still the one moving between all of them.
CAPES helps create more connection, clearer communication, and a shared approach—without taking control away from the young person.
A New Approach
Build skills you can actually use.
Our training helps you move beyond knowing what good support should look like. You practice what to do when real situations get complicated.
Make thoughtful decisions
Make thoughtful decisions when the answer is not obvious and know when to help, pause, or ask for guidance.
Help without taking over
Communicate clearly, set healthy boundaries, and support young people in building confidence and growing independence.
The Solution
The CAPES Integrated Support Framework
CAPES gives you a shared way to think about what a young person needs, what your role is, and what to do next.
The goal is not more people making decisions for young people. It is helping the people already there support them better.
CAPES integrates three complementary practices:
Coaching helps young people recognize strengths, make choices, and move toward meaningful goals.
Mentoring strengthens relationships, encouragement, connection, and trust.
Facilitation helps people communicate, make decisions together, and coordinate support more clearly.
CAPES does not ask you to become something else. It helps you use your existing role more intentionally—and understand how your role connects with others.
Our First Certification
CAPES Certified Foundations Coach
Our first certification is designed for coaches, mentors, facilitators, youth-support professionals, and Extended Learning Programs—the people and organizations already showing up for young people every day.
Coaches and Youth-Support Professionals
If you coach, mentor, facilitate, or otherwise support young people directly, CAPES helps you strengthen the way you listen, communicate, make decisions, set boundaries, and guide growth.
Extended Learning Programs
If you lead or work in an Extended Learning program, CAPES helps you give staff a shared approach they can use more consistently with young people and with one another.
Our CAPES Certified Foundations Coach training includes 60 hours of fully asynchronous, on-demand learning with realistic practice, reflection, and a certification test—so you can build practical skill and demonstrate what you know on your schedule.
Our Vision
What if young people did not have to navigate the gaps alone?
What if the people around a young person understood what each person could contribute and communicated more clearly?
What if support felt more consistent from one setting to another, while the young person had real opportunities to speak up, make decisions, and build confidence?
That is what we want CAPES to make possible.
Meet the Founder
I built CAPES because I have seen this problem from more than one side.
For more than 25 years, I have worked across entrepreneurship, human-centered design, education, accessibility, and student success.
I have also lived these systems personally—as someone with learning differences and as a parent who spent years advocating for my daughter through a complex educational journey.
Again and again, I saw caring, capable people doing their best while young people and families were still left to bridge the spaces between disconnected systems.
CAPES grew from a question I could not stop asking: What would change if we designed support around the whole young person instead of around separate systems?
Join the CAPES Community
If you care about helping young people thrive, we’d love to have you with us.
Explore our training, share what resonates, and stay connected with a growing community of people who want young people to feel seen, supported, and increasingly able to speak up for what they need.