Child Welfare

Meeting the needs of children and families in the area of child welfare presents among the most challenging and complex problems facing our communities. Children in foster care require individualized planning and support that meet both their physical and emotional needs, offers them stability and safety, allows them an education, and gives them a meaningful opportunity to enjoy productive lives as adults. Los Angeles County—which has our nation’s largest child welfare system—and the Weingart Foundation have been involved in improving the lives of children and families in foster care for decades.

The Foundation launched the Child Welfare Initiative in 2008, and requested a comprehensive review of new programs, policy changes and best practices in order to improve outcomes and conditions for at-risk youth and families involved with the child welfare system. From that review, the Initiative’s goal was to develop an action plan for using finite philanthropic dollars to catalyze reforms in child welfare that ultimately could achieve independent financial sustainability.

In 2009, the Initiative finalized an action plan of programmatic and policy objectives with a focus on kinship care as well as on youth aging out of foster care directly into adulthood. Kinship foster care currently accounts for the largest number of foster care placements in LA County, and one of the largest in the state. Kinship care providers, however, often receive less support than other foster care providers and are more likely to be older, sicker and poorer. And, while transition-age youth continue to receive considerable public and private resources in housing and related services, outcomes for this group remain relatively poor. For example, foster youth are 44 percent less likely to graduate from high school than their non-foster peers. In addition, fewer than three percent of foster youth graduate from college, and more than half lack stable housing after leaving care.

Working with a collaborative of other philanthropic entities and in partnership with an array of nonprofit organizations, the Foundation’s Initiative coordinated the establishment of a Caregiver Center at the Edelman Children’s Court in Los Angeles. The Center serves newly formed families, as well as existing kinship families and foster care providers involved with the court and foster care systems. Other milestones include expanding the availability of health care services for children in kinship foster care and for children with kinship caregivers in the community, increasing the capacity of community based support groups for kinship caregivers, and working to establish permanent supportive housing for children in kinship foster care. The Initiative also continues to work with housing and service providers for transition-age youth, which involves developing best practices that meet the needs of former foster youth, and changing the public and private practices that form barriers to meeting those needs.

Initially intended as a three-year project, the Initiative is currently taking the strategic steps to establish itself as a permanent program for serving at-risk children and families.

For additional information on the Child Welfare Initiative, please click here.