innovation

While large-scale, multi-year projects are essential in advancing the work of child welfare and improving the overall health and well-being of children and families, the many moving parts and big teams can sometimes make the work feel a bit impersonal and hard to connect to.

It started as a simple story. Once again, the Trump administration had demonstrated its reputed disdain for facts and evidence. This time it had revoked the contract of one of the federal government’s top evidence clearinghouses — one that reviewed studies of mental health and drug treatment programs to determine their effectiveness.

In the summer of 2012, the State Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1013 which mandated that the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) launch a broad-based, stakeholder process to determine how to reform California’s foster care system.

John Kelly, the editor-in-chief of The Imprint, along with Chronicle reporter, Jeremy Loudenback, recently posted a well-written trilogy of articles discussing in detail the 12-year saga of the Katie A. v Bonta litigation in California.

A prominent Los Angeles-based policy advocacy group headed by well-known child advocate Andrew Bridge will be merging with a direct service provider by the end of this year. “Part of the thinking was if we could we combine direct practice with the implementation of policy, we would have a much stronger organization,” said Sylvia Fogelman, the founder and CEO of the Southern California Foster Family and Adoption Agency (SCFFAA), which usually handles a caseload of about 75 children from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) at one time.

Entrepreneur is a cool business magazine that Youth Services Insider invariably buys on flights to and fro the nation’s capital. I grabbed the most recent issue on a recent flight back from Florida, where YSI had the pleasure of speaking about foster care and the public dialogue at the Daniel Foundation’s national foster care conference.

Claremont Graduate University is taking applications for its well-known Peter F. Drucker Award, which since 1991 has honored “change that creates a new dimension of performance” within the nonprofit industry. The first place prize, which is sponsored by the Coca-Cola Foundation, is $100,000.