Bradley Foundation Grant Proposal
Successful Grant Proposal
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Organization
Safe Families for Children Alliance
4300 W. Irving Park Rd.
Chicago, IL 60641
Request
$250,000
Why Safe Families for Children?
Every
year, several million kids in the U.S. find themselves living in a home
overwhelmed by a crisis. Poverty, loss of a job or a home can often result in
children being neglected or worse. These are societal concerns that impact
entire communities. True prevention requires a shared concern and commitment to
see families strengthened by intentional relationships and a community. Even
when parents are doing “all the right things,” for families without resources
or a network of support, such crises can put children at high risk.
And
while state child welfare agencies can step in once cases of abuse or neglect
occur, they are overwhelmingly unprepared to help families before abuse or
neglect happens. This can leave struggling parents with limited options and
unable to effectively weather their crisis.
More
than 270,000 children across the United States enter foster care each year,
adding to the more than 438,000 already in care. When children are placed in
the system, they often face years of instability and separation from family.
Fewer than half the children in the foster care system are ultimately reunited
with their families, and the negative impact of time in foster care can be
lifelong. This disruption to the stability in their lives has adverse effects
on educational, social, and behavioral outcomes.
Consider
the following statistics:
(1)
Only 1 out of 2 foster youth will have gainful employment by the time they
reach 24
(2)
17% of females who age out of foster care are pregnant
(3)
32% of aged out youth are involved in some way with the legal system.
The
foster care system overwhelmingly disrupts families’ lives. For some families,
government intervention is necessary to stop child abuse that is already
underway. In other situations, parents truly want to care well for their
children and need a lifeline of support to get through their challenge.
To
help deflect children from the child welfare system, research demonstrates
parents who have secure relationships themselves lead to a reduction in child
maltreatment.
Humans are social creatures, and we
require connections to thrive. Close personal relationships as well as a sense
of community are strongly linked with physical and mental well-being,
happiness, and longevity. Constructive and supportive social connections help
buffer parents from stressors and support nurturing parenting behaviors that
promote secure attachments in young children and prevent child maltreatment.
Therefore, parents’ high quality social connections are essential to both
caregivers and their children.
Need
In a March 2022 USA Today
investigative article, it was found that nationally, more than 50 percent of
removals have been due to neglect. This is a catch-all category that may
include lack of food, clothing, food, or shelter. In the state of Florida, where the article
focused, it stated even though poverty declined within that state over the past
two years, removals of children increased by 25 percent. Several parents who
had children removed told journalists they had little help or support in
securing the needed resources so they could care for their children.
Two mothers were required to leave
their children with grandparents but on the condition that they would leave and
could not live there. The mothers struggled to connect with a job, housing, and
other necessities so they could bring their children home. They were alone, trans versing a complicated
system of resources not easy to access. Some of the support offered by local
agencies required a vehicle to get to a location, another agency required the
mother to place her infant son for adoption, a stipulation they gave in
exchange for helping her to stabilize.
Experts in Florida are quoted as
saying the money given to foster parents would be better spent helping birth
families escape poverty, stabilize, and provide for their children. Much trauma
would be averted for children, while parents would be supported in ways they
need, and empowered with choices rather than coercion and the ability to keep
their family together.
This is at the very heart of Safe
Families for Children. We come alongside the family, support them as they are
and empower them by connecting them with families who have the resources and
compassion. This is done with respect and friendship, not through posing
impossible red tape for a parent to navigate. Children are given the
opportunity to know volunteers who care for them and can become like extended
family.
Program
Description
Safe Families keeps children safe
and families together during times of crisis through a community of volunteer
families that temporarily host children while the family works through tough
situations. We believe children should not have to be harmed before they are
protected. To that end, our aim is to disrupt the child welfare system by
encircling families with dynamic groups of volunteer support. Our trained
volunteers wrap around the parent and children, providing social equity,
relationships, referrals to needed resources, temporary host homes for
children, and mentoring for parents.
We are not merely a program
introducing paid employees into families’ lives. We carefully identify,
recruit, and train volunteers moved by understanding and compassion to join
families in their lives and walk alongside them and their children through the
challenges they face.
When a parent stabilizes and
children return home, our volunteers can remain in their lives, providing an
ongoing safety net of support and protective factors. It is this long-term
impact that offers families a resource they may not have previously had access
to – community, friends they trust, people to call on in an emergency.
Safe Families innovative approach is working to deflect children from foster care and helping parents to stabilize. Our method has had enormous impact across the nation, serving in more than 120 communities, helping marginalized families, preventing child abuse, and supporting families.
Nationally, more than 27,000
children and 55,000 families have been served and connected to a Circle of
Support since 2003. Safe Families is a national movement with the goal of
preventing the need for foster care in the first place and providing families
with needed social supports and preventative factors to help children thrive.
Safe Families believes every
family who needs it, should have a “Safe Family” in their network of support to
help them thrive, keep children in their care, and build stronger communities.
By doing so, families who have historically been victims of systemic inequities
will have the resources for upward mobility, a method of ending the poverty
cycle, and long-term stability for themselves and their children.
Strengths of the Program
Safe Families for Children hosts children and creates extended
family-like supports for children and parents who have nowhere else to turn
through a community of devoted, trained volunteers who are motivated by
compassion to keep children safe and families intact.
Safe
Families for Children is a community-driven nonprofit organization that works
to prevent child abuse and decrease the number of children being forcibly
separated from their parents through foster care. We provide a safe alternative
for parents and help build resilient families within our communities.
It is prevention-focused: This model focuses on the prevention of children entering the foster care system and creates an in-between option for parents in crisis (e.g., homelessness, unemployment, hospitalization, domestic violence, incarceration, and substance abuse treatment.)
Safe Families’ model is designed to act like an “extended family” for the child rather than a temporary living situation. This is designed to reduce trauma for the child.
It is non-coercive: Parents willingly place their children with a volunteer host family for a limited time and can opt to reunify with their children at any time – a stark contrast to the coercive nature of state placement. The fact that both families participate voluntarily with no compensation or expectation of adoption builds trust. Parents are referred through shelters, churches, police stations, schools, agencies, domestic violence centers, day cares, or self-refer.
Parents may opt to reunite their family at any time and biological parents maintain full authority and responsibility for their children. Safe Families encourages and fosters communication and visits with the child’s biological parents throughout placement, and once the arrangement has ended, encourages host families to stay in contact with the child and biological parents like an extended family would.
It is volunteer driven: Safe Families is supported by a network of more than 15,000 volunteers who serve the role of host family, family coach, or a family friend. Volunteers are recruited from a network of more than 4,600 churches across the country. Before entering the program, volunteers pass a state, local and federal background check, have fingerprints taken and complete Safe Family’s 15-hour training program, which includes seminars on safety, discipline, child development, CPR/first aid and more.
It is impact-focused: Evaluation and data are core elements of Safe Families’ business. The program is currently being evaluated by UNC Chapel Hill, in partnership with the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services, and updates from this study show positive impact so far. States implementing Safe Families report similar success – Virginia’s pilot program reported 92.3% of children being reunited with families and no children entering foster care or kinship care from July 2016 to November 2017, and the state of Nevada reported a decrease in child removal rates with their implementation. Safe Families has been involved in the passage of more than 17 state laws that support the program. Finally, SFFC has received the following awards: Peter F. Drucker Nonprofit Innovation Award (2010), Ashoka Fellow-Global Entrepreneurs (2010), Primer Movers Award (2011), Program of Excellence (2010).
Capabilities that offer innovation and proven success:
• Effective Volunteer network of families that
provide support for vulnerable children and has grown to become an
international model for helping families in crisis.
• Partnerships with motivated
faith-based nonprofits and private/public sector efforts to leverage support to
keep children safe and families intact.
• An alternative operating model
that can simultaneously partner with and disrupt child welfare services and
policy apparatus to meaningfully divert kids from coercive alternatives.
The Opportunity
Over the next five years,
Safe Families for Children is launching a nationwide expansion effort to ensure
every community with children entering foster care has access to the
extended-family-like support of Safe Families for Children. Our goal is to
reduce the number of youth entering foster care. Here’s how we’ll do it.
First, we will go deeper in the 91 communities where we already operate. The low-overhead nature of our work has allowed us to widely expand our mission across the United States. Many of our chapters operate with only one or two part-time employees and rely on volunteers to serve families. This is one of the great things about our model, but it also presents challenges when chapters receive more referrals to help families in need than they can provide.
In addition to centralized administrative support and resources from our national headquarters, we must add capacity to our existing chapters to ensure employees and volunteers have the training, bandwidth, and manpower to serve all the needs in their community.
Second, we must expand into new communities. We receive inquiries every week from interested volunteers and community partners in cities where Safe Families for Children does not yet have a presence. Because our efforts rely on volunteers, faith communities and community partnerships, launching Safe Families for Children in new areas takes time to build partnerships, and navigate local laws. Focusing first on communities and states with the highest number of children entering foster care – Texas, Los Angeles County, and New York – we will strategically open Safe Families for Children in these new markets.
We see an incredible potential to use technology to help us reach and engage more volunteers with the mission of Safe Families for Children. There are many ways for volunteers to help families in crisis, and we offer individuals from all seasons of life opportunities to get involved in any way they’re able.
We will continue to use technology to reach and educate prospective volunteers. We will also continue to use technology to facilitate referrals from schools, community partners and child protection services to identify parents in need of help. Technology solutions weave together communities of volunteers and individuals experiencing crisis to exchange social capital, track and measure the quantity and quality of touchpoints between individuals, and to measure the reduction of social isolation.
Safe Families for Children is experiencing an exciting tipping point, where we can catapult our operations and programming to the next level. We have had extreme growth over the past 20 years, and as we prepare for the next couple of decades, we must continue to innovate so that our growth and impact will likewise accelerate.
By investing in this partnership, you can play a direct role in revolutionizing how the country sees and treats families in crisis. The failed top-down approaches that have resulted in today’s broken foster care system simply aren’t good enough. If we can drastically reduce the number of children entering the foster system in local communities, we can rally the country around supporting families and children through the power of community.
Population Served
Safe Families serves many families who have difficulty in
receiving services. Some homeless and
domestic violence shelters have limited space for children or only take
children up to a certain age. Parents
that need treatment (medical, psychiatric, or substance disorder) or are facing
short-term incarceration often have nobody to temporarily care for their
children.
The population served will be
low-income, socially, and emotionally under-resourced families, primarily
single-mother families facing homelessness or other crises with children ages
0-18. The families served will benefit by having a small group of volunteers, a
“Circle of Support,” who will surround the family with empowering,
compassionate community. The hosting arrangement last an average of three weeks
to three months, and the Circle of Support may remain in relationship with the
family for weeks, months, sometimes years.
In the best of circumstances, raising
children is a challenging endeavor, coupled with not enough resources, outside
crises, and no one to fall back on if dire circumstances arise, can be
crippling to families with little margin. Not all families have extended
family, or safe friends they can rely on in a pinch. Safe Families provides
evidence-based protective factors to marginalized families who have nowhere
else to turn in a crisis.
Nationally, we serve primarily black,
multiracial, and Hispanic families. At intake, parents are given the opportunity to share their needs, and to
choose a mentor, and a host family for their child. Their preferences are
considered, and the parent sets their goals, and a mentor works alongside them.
When the child returns home, the parent can provide feedback, and to speak into
the program and what worked and what could use improvement.
Throughout the time when the children are in the hosting arrangement, the
parent is a part of the process and has a voice as to when to communicate and
visit their child and if the child is thriving with the host parents, or if a
change is needed. Children are kept as close to the parent as possible, and
within their same school district whenever possible. Many school districts work
with Safe Families to bus children to their school even if they are living
beyond those limits during a hosting when possible.
Goals to Be Achieved:
Our goals revolve around
stabilizing families and connecting families, eradicating social isolation, and
returning children safely home to a stabilized parent or relative, long-term.
Nationally, children stay with Host Families for an average of six-weeks. The average cost for Safe Families to serve a family is around $1,000 per child, though often the expenses are much lower depending on the family’s needs.
Compare the per-child cost of Safe Families to
the cost per child of the taxpayer-funded U.S. foster system which varies
slightly by state, with many spending about $64,000 per
2.
Support the national return home rate of
children at 95%.
3.
Build strong support for existing chapters so
they have the capacity to serve children and families.
Evaluation
Benchmarks have been established using
baseline data from previous years. A
secure online database maintains all records of host families, mentors,
families receiving assistance, demographic data, case notes, progress on goals,
and permanency outcomes. Case notes
provide valuable data related to improved parent/child relationships, parental
functioning, and progress towards reunification. Feedback and suggestions are welcomed from
the parent who received assistance, staff, and volunteers.
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