The Alliance for Children’s Rights and Public Counsel
Announce Nation’s First “Families Forever” Project to Help Adoptive
Families Stay Together and Thrive
Everychild Foundation $1 million grant will launch
project to support families adopting children from foster care and meet
mental health, educational and legal needs
As former foster youth and their new adoptive families celebrated
National Adoption Day on November 16, Public Counsel and the Alliance
for Children’s Rights announced a first-of-its-kind project to help
newly formed Los Angeles families stay together and thrive.
The new project will be funded by a grant from the
Everychild Foundation, which every year gives $1 million to fund a project to transform the lives of children.
The Everychild Foundation Families Forever Project will ensure
families adopting children from the foster care system or becoming legal
guardians to children without parents have long-term free legal
advocacy to access the mental health, educational, and developmental
support children need.
“We believe that children who have been victims of neglect or abuse
and the families who adopt them deserve the best,” said Hernán Vera,
President and CEO of Public Counsel. “By launching the Families Forever
Project, we are joining with the court to say that our commitment to
these kids and their families doesn’t end on adoption day, that’s when
it really starts.”
“The Everychild Foundation Families Forever Project will help
families adopting children from the child welfare system to be
successful, not just at day one, but forever,” said Janis Spire,
President and CEO of the Alliance for Children’s Rights.
“The women of Everychild are thrilled to be
able to make this innovative new project a reality,” said Jacqueline
Caster, Founder and President of the Everychild Foundation. “It is our
hope that it will be a new national model showing how having the
appropriate services available to families with children adopted from
the foster care system can help to assure permanency and happy
outcomes.”
The Families Forever Project will offer all
adoptive families and legal guardians to children a full-scope
assessment developed with UCLA researchers to determine what mental
health, educational, developmental, or other needs they may have. Then
it will pair adoptive families and legal guardians with attorneys and
social workers trained to help families secure the support they need.
Over its first two years, the project is projected to reach more than
2,300 children, from toddlers to teenagers.
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