Allies for Every Child, along with RaiseAChild and UCLA TIES for Families, are excited to announce they are the founding members of The Community Collaborative, a network formed to pursue the shared goals of removing institutional barriers, providing equitable opportunities to foster youth, and empowering marginalized groups and communities by providing excellence in foster care recruitment, services, and support, while activating and mobilizing individuals and organizations to advocate for innovative strategies and solutions to reform the foster care system.
For more than a year, the founding members have engaged in discussions around strategies for creating more vibrant and sustainable partnering opportunities. The discussions led to a consensus decision to establish a more formal collaborative that leverages the complementary programs, services, expertise, and resources of the founding members in order to provide comprehensive services to youth in foster care and families.
Joint services include foster family recruitment, family reunification, training, visitation services, mental health assessment and interventions, education advocacy, pediatric consultation, child and adolescent psychiatry, behavioral services, parent and child groups, as well as other types of support. The Community Collaborative prioritizes intentional recruitment of diverse families seeking to meet the needs of children requiring placement in foster care, including children and young people of color, sibling sets, and LGBTQIA+ youth.
Allies for Every Child, RaiseAChild, and UCLA TIES for Families understand the power and importance of collaboration as a vehicle to inform and address the needs of youth and families experiencing foster care, to implement systemic change, and to stimulate innovation and further excellence.
“Under our current system, children in foster care face dire odds. Only 58% of children in foster care graduate from high school, and only 3% graduate from college. And for those who age out of the system without a permanent family, half will be homeless within one year,” said Allies for Every Child CEO Heather Carrigan. “I’m so honored to join forces with these great organizations to make a difference for a population of kids I value more than anything else.”
The Community Collaborative’s office is centrally located in Downtown LA to maximize accessibility for families throughout the county and will host co-located staff from each agency. Allies for Every Child will retain footing in West LA, increasing The Community Collaborative’s footprint in order to build an even larger community of diverse families for the children who need and deserve them.
For media inquiries, please contact Emily Millen, Communications Director, at 310-846-4100 Ext. 6113 or emillen@alliesforeverychild.org.
