Families for Kids
Families for Kids is a national initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation created to address the crisis of children waiting for a permanent home by reforming foster care and adoption systems. Every year thousands of children are placed in publicly funded foster care. About two-thirds of these children will return to their families within one year. However, the remaining third, particularly those with special needs, will have a much longer stay in the system. As one of the eleven Families for Kids grantees, The Grand Rapids Community Foundation provides administrative leadership for Kent County's foster care and adoption reform efforts through a $1 million three-year implementation grant from the Kellogg Foundation.
In 1995, the Kent County Department of Human Services in collaboration with the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and Kent County Circuit Court – Family Division created the Family and Community Compact program to incorporate Family Group Decision Making practice into our local child welfare system. This practice model, known in our community as the Family and Community Compact program, is uniquely designed to ensure that families and communities can make timely permanency decisions, which focus on the safety and well being of the child if provided with proper support services. By utilizing a team approach between Children's Protective Services staff and community agencies that serve children and families, children in need of permanent families have expanded options. As a result of these efforts, our community has experienced a 23 percent reduction of African American, Hispanic, and Native American children placed outside of their family and community networks. Thereby making Kent County the first community in the country to successfully impact the issue of the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system.
For more information, please contact Wendy Lewis Jackson, Program Director at .
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