Children Now

Children Now will launch a community-based learning campaign to elevate youth voices and experiences in response to the urgent mental health and addiction issue in Los Angeles County. By working directly with youth to better understand the bi-directional relationship between youth emotional wellness and substance use, Children Now will strengthen efforts for county-wide policy changes to provide more supportive environments for young people who struggle with addiction.

Children Now will build a first-of-its-kind partnership that will bring together Los Angeles County youth with lived foster care experience and caregivers to design and advance policy efforts that will help eliminate barriers to stable placements and improve the overall well-being of youth in foster care. By bringing together youth and caregivers, this project addresses a critical gap in child welfare policy and ensures that community voices and experiences are leading systems change.

The Family Urgent Response System (FURS) ensures that children and youth who have spent time in foster care have access to trauma-informed supports whenever they need it, day or night, for any reason. LA County youth are advocating for peers with lived experience to be part of the FURS team that provides this vital support so children and youth feel they have an ally in critical moments. Children Now will partner with youth to ensure peer support is intentionally integrated into FURS to meet the needs of children and youth in foster care.

Education is pivotal to young people’s successful transition into adulthood, yet data consistently reflects that many of our students in foster care are not thriving in K-12 environments and, as a result, are less likely to be prepared for higher education and/or career success. Children Now’s project will increase transparency around and highlight the existing gaps for the dedicated supports and services provided to LA County’s students in foster care and elevate opportunities to improve their educational experiences and outcomes.

The Family Urgent Response System (FURS) will change the course for Los Angeles (LA) County’s children and youth currently and formerly in foster care by helping them experience stability in nurturing family homes, strengthening trust and relationships between children and their caregivers, and preventing the inappropriate criminalization of traumatized children and youth.

Foster youth face unique obstacles that can disrupt their learning and impact their long-term educational success. As such, students in foster care need extra educational supports, yet school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education are not held accountable for providing the targeted help they need to learn and succeed. Children Now will work to increase transparency and accountability in Los Angeles County to ensure foster youth receive the dedicated supports and services they need to improve their educational outcomes.

In recent years, major wildfires wreaked havoc on the Los Angeles community, which has been especially devastating for the children served by the child welfare system and their foster families. Children Now is aiming to improve access to essential resources and services for youth in foster care and their caregivers immediately following a disaster. This project will ensure that LA communities and the state are well-prepared to support foster youth and foster parents following a disaster.

Children Now will support thousands of Angelenos to voice their support for quality care and education for LA’s babies.

Children Now will bring together thousands of voices in LA County to promote cross-sector collaboration and demand large-scale change to prevent childhood trauma and reduce its impact on kids.

Children Now will help make LA County the best place to learn by recruiting, connecting and building the advocacy capacity of a diverse range of LA groups, including parent, faith, business and community organizations. With tools and training from Children Now, these groups will collectively push for local and state policies designed to ensure that all of the estimated 793,811 kids ages 0-5 living in LA County have access to quality early childhood programs.

We are connecting the incredible constituency power that exists for kids in LA to influence state & local policymaking in their favor.