OAKLAND, CA - Alameda County Social Services Agency and Casey Family Programs, announce their partnership to safely reduce the number of children and youth in foster care in Alameda County. Through a memorandum of understanding, Casey Family Programs has agreed to allocate $250,000 a year over a multi-year period to support child welfare reforms in Alameda County through an administrative reinvestment process. Reinvestments will help to strengthen services and supports to improve the well being of children and prevent re-entry back into the foster care system.
“The enormity of the issue of child abuse and neglect mandates these types of partnerships if we hope to safely reduce the number of children in foster care. We want to shift the paradigm in Alameda County,” said Chet P. Hewitt, director, Alameda County Social Services Agency. “Currently we have more children in foster care than we have available foster and adoptive homes. One day we hope to have more available homes than we have children in foster care. This partnership is an excellent first step in that direction.”
The Casey Family Programs partnership will help to support the many reform efforts that the Alameda County, Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has implemented over the last five years. With an emphasis on prevention and early intervention, the DCFS has implemented programs to provide families with support services to keep children safely at home and out of the child welfare system. In addition, the department has made support for relative caregivers and housing for emancipated youth, who have high rates of homelessness after “aging out” of the system, major priorities.
“The progress Alameda County has made in safely placing children in permanent homes and out of the child welfare system is impressive,” said David Berns, executive vice president of child and family services at Casey Family Programs. “The commitment and expertise of the child welfare professionals of Alameda County provide a model as we expand our work to safely reduce the number of children in foster care by 50 percent and reinvest to strengthen child welfare across the nation.”
Casey Family Programs’ field office in Oakland, Calif., has served youth and families in three counties and 20 different school districts for more than 30 years. The foundation operates across the country and works with counties, states, and American Indian and Alaska Native tribes to improve services and outcomes for the 500,000 children currently in foster care.
Madge Haynes, senior director of Casey Family Programs’ Bay Area office and Carol J. Collins, assistant agency director of the Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services will work together to implement and manage this partnership.