Breaking the foster care cycle, one family at a time.
Preventing the Next Generation of Child Welfare Involvement
In Los Angeles County, at any given time, more than 4,000 parents with open dependency cases were previously in the child welfare system as children themselves. These primarily young and disproportionately Black and Brown parents constitute approximately 15% of all parents in the system. Many of these young families are before the court due to poverty and/or challenges that could be resolved with interventions or supportive services rather than court involvement.
The Family Support & Advocacy Center (FSAC) focuses on precisely these families to provide them with support and advocacy to avoid child welfare involvement. By working with former CLC clients to prevent court jurisdiction, FSAC’s innovative model will reduce the number of young families facing unnecessary disruption, breaking the intergenerational cycle of foster care. As CLC has already seen great success in supporting current expectant and parenting clients in parenting their own children and avoiding system involvement on their babies, our experience in this arena positions us well to see positive results once the doors to our new program are open.
Our Model
FSAC’s multidisciplinary model includes legal advocacy and case management support; significant community networking to identify clients in need and provide resources to clients; and what we expect will be a productive collaboration with the child welfare agency. Key program components include:
- Parent support partners, along with attorney support;
- Service navigation/stakeholder connection;
- Creative solution-building where resources don’t currently exist;
- Small caseloads/ability to devote significant time to support clients in wide range of issues;
- Work with community-based organizations to procure needed supplies to parent successfully; and
- Direct support or linkage to support for legal issues ranging from housing/eviction to custody orders/family law issues and more