Foster Family Agencies (FFAs) like Allies are a vital lifeline for children and youth in foster care, providing safe and loving homes for as long as they need until they can reunify with family, or creating forever families through adoption when they cannot. Despite this critical, ongoing need, recent changes in California law increased liability to FFAs, causing the company providing insurance for 90% of agencies in the state to announce they will not renew policies upon their expiration. While Allies’ coverage remains secure, we recognize the urgency of this industry-wide issue and are proactively advocating with elected officials and our State- and County-level partners at the CA Alliance of Child and Family Services and the Association of Community Human Service Agencies to find a sustainable solution.
Allies’ CEO, Heather Carrigan, recently submitted public comment to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to underline this need:
Allies for Every Child has served youth in foster care for nearly 40 years, since our start as a foster care agency in 1987. While our work has evolved over time to also emphasize a host of strategies designed to prevent child welfare system involvement, we know that there’s still a vital need for foster and adoptive parents to care for kids who aren’t safe at home. Thanks to our unique approach, our foster family agency (FFA) has a single-placement permanency rate of 93% compared to the County and State permanency rates of 33%.
We carefully recruit, train, and support loving foster and adoptive parents who understand the needs of children in the foster care system and share our commitment to ensuring every child has the childhood they deserve. We intentionally seek culturally affirming families, families of color and LGBTQ+ families who reflect the diversity of the children and youth who are overrepresented in foster care; we also find families who are committed to keeping siblings together and parenting older youth.
Allies’ unique multidisciplinary expertise and programs enable us to support foster youth and families in ways that the County simply cannot. Our staff includes licensed clinical professionals (pediatric occupational therapists, early childhood mental health therapists, nutritionists, public health nurses, etc.) who understand the traumatic impacts of childhood instability and being moved from home to home. Allies provides therapeutic support groups to children and families (directly with Allies clinicians and through our partnership with UCLA TIES for Families), educational advocacy, healthcare access, regional center services advocacy, and high-quality early education. Through our community partnerships with other organizations, we connect children and families to additional resources that support them with food and housing insecurity, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc.
LA’s foster care system is the largest in the country—the loss of FFAs would directly increase the already unacceptable levels of instability and trauma faced by children and youth in this system. We know that children and youth who linger in foster care without the support, consistency, and unwavering commitment of a family face unacceptable odds and an incredibly high risk of homelessness.
Thank you, Supervisor Barger and Supervisor Horvath, for introducing this motion urging the County to explore all possible solutions to this crisis. I ask that you use whatever resources you have available to urgently identify and implement short- and long-term solutions to prevent thousands of children from the threat of losing the reliable, high-quality professional support they depend on and from being separated from yet another home.
