The Partnership strives to ensure a coordinated, collaborative approach to the investments needed to improve the child welfare outcomes of safety, permanency and well-being. Focusing on infrastructure, program improvements and policy, we recognize the hard work of collaboration – and how difficult it can be to move a complex and diverse child welfare field in a unified direction.

Perhaps because of this, we seek all the more to work together in ways that truly support the children and families served by our collective agencies and organizations.

A set of foundational principles and values guide our work.

Principles include:

• Investing in and helping to develop local innovations is an important first step in system-wide change.
• Creating a shared vision and aligning investment priorities helps to more successfully leverage and maximize available child welfare resources.
• By closely tracking local advances, practices that improve outcomes for children and families can be identified and taken to scale.
• Youth and parent involvement are essential to our work to improve the child welfare system.
• Child welfare agencies cannot do it alone – public and community partners are vital to sustained improvement.

• Public-private partnership
• Youth and parent involvement
• Ongoing assessment and evaluation
• Accountability
• Fairness and equity
• Leadership
• Innovation
• Prevention and early intervention

Co-Investments

The Co-Investment Partnership works to identify and support programs, policies and practices that improve and sustain the safety, permanency and well-being of children and youth in the state. The Partners coordinate and leverage their investments to establish and support a number of critical activities described in this section.

The following list includes those activities as well as projects and activities that are made possible through the California Child Welfare Services Program Improvement Fund. The Fund was established in 2004 through legislation allowing private philanthropic dollars to be matched with federal funds that enable additional investments in select areas targeted by the California Department of Social Services. The fund enhances the state’s ability to provide a comprehensive system of supports that promote positive outcomes for children and families. Nearly $1.8 million was leveraged through the fund in fiscal year 2009-2010, resulting in a total investment of more than $3 million in important child welfare strategies and practices.

• Birth to Six Initiative – This initiative is designed to improve the ability of the child welfare system to meet the developmental needs of infants and young children through changes in policy and practice. With foundation support, the Youth Law Center is implementing this project in three California counties.
• California Connected by 25 Initiative (CC25I) – This project helps address the needs of youth as they transition from foster care to adulthood. The initiative assists county child welfare agencies and their communities in building a comprehensive continuum of support and services across key focus areas, building on the four core strategies of Family to Family. The initiative is being implemented in nine California counties.
• California Independent Living Program Transformation Breakthrough Series Collaborative –
  Recognizing that many foster youth are not being adequately prepared for and supported into adulthood, a team of national and state experts recommended reform of the state's Independent Living Program. Hallmarks of the reform include cross-system collaboration; integrating supports at an early age; and youth, caregivers agencies and communities working together to achieve goals of permanency, education and employment for all foster youth.
  
  The Partnership is supporting the planning and implementation of a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) to transform California's Independent Living Program in ten California counties. The BSC quality improvement methodology is designed to enable participating teams to make dramatic improvements in a focused topic of practice over a short period of time.
• California Permanency for Youth Project (CPYP) – The California Permanency for Youth Project was founded to address the need for youth permanency prior to youth exiting foster care and to assist child welfare agencies, parents and the community in understanding this fundamental need. CPYP’s work is accomplished through increasing awareness of older youth permanency, influencing public policy and administrative practices, and assisting eighteen county sites and private agency partners in implementing new practices to achieve permanency for older children and youth.
• California Disproportionality Project – This project is a 24-month collaborative learning effort that supports the elimination of racial disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare system. The project utilizes a Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology and builds on the work of a national project.
• Children of Incarcerated Parents – The goal of this program is to support the creation of a nationally replicable model for systematizing services to children and families in the dual systems of child welfare and adult corrections while improving outcomes for children.
• Connecting Child Welfare and Mental Health Services – The goal of this project is to develop the vision, goals, strategies and activities for a child welfare mental health partnership that would examine how the child welfare and public mental health systems could better work together to improve the lives of children and families. The Partnership determined this work should be a 2008 priority.
• Family to Family – The California Family to Family Initiative is a public-private partnership between national and state foundations and the California Department of Social Services. The initiative is part of a nationwide child welfare and foster care reform effort that is focused on helping state and local child welfare agencies improve outcomes for children, youth and families. These improvements are made through supporting partnerships with local communities; improving training and support for resource (foster) families; including children, youth, families and their support networks in decision making; and using data to inform practice and policy change. Currently, 25 counties in California participate in the initiative.
• National Foster Care and Adoption Months – These annual Capitol events honor individuals, innovative programs and partners that change the lives of foster youth in California. With the support of a coalition of more than 30 organizations, the events bring attention and support to the critical needs of the state’s 66,000 children in care.
• Residentially Based Services Reform – The goal of this project is to improve outcomes for foster children by enhancing the quality and scope of care and services provided with the specific objective of expediting a permanent family placement. It is intended to transform traditional group homes from structured often long-term living environments for children who have experienced multiple failed placements in foster family homes into intensive interventions tasked with returning children to their own homes or to another permanent and stable family setting in as short a time possible.
• The Transitional Housing Placement Program (THP) – The goal of the program is to assist youth with successful emancipation from the foster system through the provision of “a safe environment for youth to practice the skills they learned in the Independent Living Program (ILP).” This program was developed to provide foster youth between the ages of 16 and 18 years of age with an opportunity to live on their own or in shared housing prior to exiting care.
• The THP-Plus Program – This program is an expansion of the THP program to allow youth up to the age of 24 and who have exited the foster care/probation system to have access to transitional housing and supportive services. Housing options can include youth living alone, or with roommates in an apartment or single-family dwelling.

• Public education materials
  We develop public education materials to help Partnership member organizations speak with a consistent and clear voice about the needs of children and families in California and to describe the efforts that are underway to improve outcomes. Messages and materials are used by Partner and Advisory Committee member organizations in outreach to policymakers and the news media.
  
  Materials include a child welfare services information kit and “Insights,” a publication that highlights California’s performance in improving child welfare outcomes and provides “insight” into the public policy issues related to those outcomes. The inaugural issue of “Insights” was published in early 2009.
• Briefings and meetings with policymakers and staff
  The Partnership meets with policymakers and/or their staff to share public education materials and ensure that policymakers are informed of the needs of children and families.
• Media outreach
  Partnership public education and outreach to the news media helps to inform both policymakers and the general public. The Partnership conducts regular outreach to reporters to help them understand the needs of children and families in the child welfare system and the impact of public policies.
• Web site and E-Outreach
  To efficiently reach child welfare stakeholders and policymakers and ensure that they're informed about the work of the Partnership and our priority areas, we use the Partnership’s Web site to disseminate information. We are also developing a ListServ so that we can effectively reach those who want to stay apprised of key child welfare issues.

Each year, the Co-Investment Partnership takes stock of our accomplishments – what we have collaboratively achieved as a working public-private partnership.

The following summarizes overall accomplishments in 2008. (See 2008 Priorities for a full listing of project-focused accomplishments.)

• Facilitated Investments in the Child Welfare Services Program Improvement Fund – In Fiscal Year 2009-2010, the Co-Investment Partnership effectively leveraged over $1.8 million to achieve a total investment of more than $3 million in critical child welfare strategies and practices. Projects supported through the fund include:
• Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Independent Living Transformation
• California Connected by 25 Initiative
• California Disproportionality Project
• California Permanency for Youth Project
• Early Learning/Safe Starts
• Family to Family


• Convened ad hoc workgroups and conducted research in the Partnership's priority areas of permanency, education and mental health – resulting in the development of comprehensive Workgroup activities resulted in the development of comprehensive approaches and materials needed to increase the understanding of the child welfare system and promote system-wide improvements. Workgroups and key accomplishments include:
• Permanency Sustainability Workgroup
  Partnership staff convened and coordinated workgroup activities to increase the understanding of permanency and also worked collaboratively with Partnership organizations to facilitate resources and investments to promote improved permanency practices. We undertook a statewide campaign that branded the issue of permanency and the concept of "Love and Belonging. For a Lifetime." for state and local child welfare and court professionals, and produced and disseminated 30,000 calendars featuring art by children and youth in foster care with messages and associated information about the importance of love, belonging and family connections.


• Foster Youth Education Workgroup
  The Partnership played a pivotal role in creating an aligned set of policy priorities as well as providing a context for shared learning to improve education outcomes. We worked to increase agreement of the critical role early care has on school success and secured a commitment of key stakeholders to create a plan to improve the understanding of the unique social and emotional needs of young childrent. We also supported a robust network of child welfare and education professionals focused on sharing key insights and program strategies aimed at improving successful transitions and support for yought emancipateg from foster care.


• Mental Health and Child Welfare Workgroup
  Partnership consultants increased interest and support for collaboration between child welfare and mental health through a number of facilitated convenings of professional from both systems. In addition, they reveiwed major initiatives and redesign concepts and documented the alignment of core elements and shared values embodied in the Mental Health Services Act, Child Welfare Redesign and the Child Welfare Positioning Initiative.


• Fostering Connections Workgroup
  The Co-Investment Partnership provided support to coordinate public education efforts related to implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act in California. We developed and disseminated public education materials and coordinated a press conference featuring the release of a research study on outcomes of emancipated foster youth.


• Foster Care and Adoption Months
  In 2009, the Partnership developed public education materials that provided an overview of key foster care and adoption issues and the activities taking place during the two public awareness raising months of May and November. These materials provided information for stakeholders, policymakers and the media to build their understanding of the needs of children and youth in foster care. Efforts resulted in statewide media coverage.


• Supported an Integration Team –
  The Partners co-invested to support an Integration Team that works to move Partnership activities and priorities forward and to vision and guide integration efforts. Efforts resulted in the coordination of multiple efforts throughout California that better ensure consistency in practice and prevent duplication of efforts. Specific efforts included support for the Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Independent Living Program Transformation and the piloting of the Families for Life Permanency Teaming model in five sites across the state.
• Implemented Public Education and Outreach Program to Support Partnership Priorities –
  The Partnership's public education efforts focused on increasing the understanding of the needs of children and families in the child welfare system and California's progress in improving foster care outcomes. In 2009, we developed and widely disseminated a variety of public education materials.
• Insights
• Annual Report
• Child Welfare Services Information Kit


• Conducted Targeted Outreach to Policymakers –
  The Partnership worked in 2009 to inform policymakers on the needs of vulnerable children and families and the impact of various policy and budget proposals. We helped to coordinate a successful press conference with key legislative leaders and a national researcher on the outcomes for youth emancipating from foster care, and conducted briefings and outreach for key legislative staff on the needs of children and families in the child welfare system and efforts to improve outcomes.