Rainbow had humble beginnings with 2-3 staff who stretched themselves to meet the needs of as many children and families that they could. They had an office at 906 Williamson Street and it was almost through the will of the community that Rainbow took off.

“For our first office, we took desks off the street,” Kato recalled. “Nurses at Meriter donated toaster ovens. A social worker donated an electric typewriter. Office supply stores actually gave us enough to fill a whole car full of office supplies. That’s how we started.”

Rainbow later moved to offices above The Progressive on E. Main Street before purchasing the building that currently houses them on E. Washington Ave. When they first moved there, they were surrounded by car dealerships. Now they are surrounded by tall commercial and residential buildings. But the mission of Rainbow has remained the same.

“We used to be one program when we started and now we have 9-10 programs,” Kato said. “We have close to 30 staff right now. So we are still small, but we are small, but mighty. And I think because of that, we are agile enough to be able to individualize rather than one size fits all kinds of services. We really want to do whatever is best for those children and families. And we never work with children alone. We’re never isolated. We’re always working with families and the support of extended families sometimes. We’re sometimes really working with 2-3 generations of trauma. Because of that and the brain development research and neurobiology are really showing that the earlier, the better.”

Rainbow serves about 1,000 children and adults each year. And while center of their services is the therapy that they provide for children, the Rainbow staff reach into many aspects of the children’s lives to provide support and seek change in the lives of all of the people in those children’s lives.

“I think our primary program is the intensive trauma treatment,” Kato said. “I think that is where you do have multiple generations. And we have child adult separate therapists, so that they each can feel safe. But we also have folks working in the community, so that it isn’t just isolated that we are doing something here at Rainbow. We’re really out and about in the classrooms as well trying to help them adjust in the classroom, but also advocating for and supporting the caregivers and parents who may be having to go to court or are having challenges in so many other ways whether it is housing or having access to resources.”

Rainbow’s services have evolved to reach all circumstances in which the children find themselves.

“The success that we have is because we are following our clients, our consumers,” Kato emphasized. “What do they need?’ That’s why we started introducing grandparents and other relatives. Suddenly back in 2004, I realized we had six grandparents raising their grandkids. And they had such unique needs that we wanted to start at least a support group. And so we met at St. Mark’s Church where it was freezing cold. And the roof leaked. But eventually, we were able to bring them here. So now we sometimes have 30-40 people. And we just hired two lived-experience grandparents who help in facilitating the groups.”

Rainbow’s clientele has evolved over the years. Whereas when it was founded children of color made up 25-35 percent of their clientele, they now make up 50-60 percent. Rainbow has always had strong programming for the Spanish-speaking community. One reason for this was as Rainbow was getting started, a new wave of immigrants were coming to the U.S. and Madison when the Cuban Mariel boatlift happened in 1980.

“Now we have three bi-cultural, bilingual Spanish-speaking therapists who are licensed,” Kato said. “And we also have a nurse who is also our back-up with that because we have a new program, which is to really look at trauma. We have a psychiatrist and we are partnering with them and UW-Madison Dept. of Psychiatry. And we have a nurse and a clinician. We’re trying to see working with pediatricians how we can help and not have them have to make 4-5 different appointments and go to different places. I think psychiatry is probably one of the biggest gaps nationally in terms of shortages. There are lots of reasons why. But we are so fortunate that we have Dr. Tanner Bommersbach and we are giving him an Extra Mile Award because he is so awesome in being able to work with folks who have a hard time trusting folks. The families also know us. So they feel that they have a true team that is working with them through that cultural lens as well.”

As Madison and Dane County’s population grows, Rainbow has found the need to remain flexible in how it serves people who are coming from a multitude of backgrounds and have experienced so many different sources of trauma.

“Everyone is so unique,” Kato said. “Their backgrounds are so different in how their worldviews are shaped in different ways, no matter how young. And things that have happened to some kids who are only 5-6-years-old is unbelievable and would be difficult to handle even in a lifetime. It’s hard to talk about these things with other people. We have generations with human trafficking. It’s not the easiest thing to think about. There is child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, even drug-endangered children. But we are working on a broader level with trauma on natural disasters, sometimes creation of loss. We may have 40,000 folks that we have worked with and maybe 60 percent exposed to domestic violence. None of them are the same. None of those situations are exactly the same.”

Kato is concerned with what the future may hold. While Rainbow provides singular services, they are provided in the context of collaboration with a number of service providers, both public and nonprofit, whose services are dependent upon the others in order to provide the complete array of services that children and families need. With the severe cuts implemented by the Trump Administration and the instability of the economy, Kato is concerned about the ability of this social service network to meet the needs of families.

“If we don’t really look at the full continuum of mental health needs and community because it is systemic, we are going to see more out-of-home placements and we’re going to see more in-patient psychiatric hospitalizations at a very young age,” Kato predicted. “And that is happening now. You will see more children committing crimes. It doesn’t take long from pre-school to high school. But what is the biggest population being suspended and expelled today? It’s pre-schoolers because they can’t say, ‘Emotionally, I don’t have these needs met.’ They have doubt. We’ve had a child who was in five centers in four months. They lasted one day. So it’s a matter too of working with strong, early-childhood programs, which is what we do because there are so many wonderful ones that I would call them therapeutic early-childhood programs. They wouldn’t call themselves that. But they have those seasoned folks. And this is a hard crisis time for childcare and early childhood programs. So I am just worried overall with the layers of trauma including ICE and all of these other things that are already impacting trauma victims.”

In addition to public and private grants and individual donations, Rainbow’s main fundraising event is Rhumba for Rainbow, now in its 22^nd year. When Rhumba was created, Kato wanted to create a fun fundraiser and that is what has been delivered since the first Rhumba that about 170 people attended at Monona Terrace. It has moved around a few times in the subsequent years as it continued to grow and is now returning to Monona Terrace on September 18^th where over 700 people are expectred to join in the Rhumba fun. One of the main features is the dance competition.