Located in the San Gabriel Valley, our office serves the entire county of Los Angeles. Ten percent of the young people in the nation’s foster care system live in our county.

Focus on transition-age youth
The heart of our work is assisting youth as they make the transition from foster care into their communities. The San Gabriel Valley has the highest number of foster youth living in group care in the county and the majority of these youth transition directly to independent living without ever returning home.

Through a drop-in community center called PASC (Pasadena Alumni Support Center), this year we will serve some 400 teenagers and young adults currently or formerly in foster care.

We also work on a larger scale to improve services for young people leaving the foster care system. As a member of the Emancipation Program Partnership—a coalition of public and private agencies and individuals—we are helping to redesign emancipation services available to 25,000 eligible youth age 14-21 throughout L.A. County.

Partnering to support kinship families
Lending support to kinship caregivers—in many cases, grandmothers who are raising their second families—is another focus of our work. We expect to serve more than 300 families in 2004 in partnership with the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles.

The kinship center, located in South Los Angeles, is a community-based advocacy and referral service where grandparents and kinship caregivers:

• navigate public bureaucracies
• secure the money, services, and support they need
• advocate for themselves and the young people they are raising
• provide each other with support
• find respite

We are committed to working closely with public and private partners—including the L.A. County Department of Child and Family Services and a broad spectrum of community organizations—to improve outcomes for L.A. County’s youth and families.