Take Action to Strengthen Families and Keep Children Safe!
There are many ways you can help strengthen families to keep children safe and out of foster care, or ways to help children who are placed into foster care thrive.
- Learn More about Local Efforts in Your Community: Learn more about foster care and the challenges impacting children and families involved in your state or community’s child welfare system. Find out what organizations in your community are working to support vulnerable children and families and find out ways to support their efforts to strengthen families. Visit the Child Welfare Information Gateway and CDF’s State of America’s Children report for more information and data by state.
- Push for Implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act: Historic reforms were just made to improve the child welfare system to help keep children safely with their families, and advocates and individuals need to encourage their community and state to take advantage of these new reforms to help vulnerable children and families. Help spread the word about the new law, learn what your state is doing to prepare for implementation, and urge your state officials and policymakers to provide the funding needed to support these new reforms. Learn more about the Family First Prevention Services Act.
- Support Children and Youth in Foster Care: Connect with local programs working with young people in foster care and provide help—whether through donations, school or clothing supplies, academic supports, college preparation, connections to job and internship opportunities, mentorships, becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), or other ways to uplift these young people and advocate for their unique needs.
- Support Families Involved in the Child Welfare System: There are many important ways to help children by support their families—and that includes their birth parents, relatives who may be stepping in to care for them, foster parents or adoptive parents. Engage your friends, neighborhood associations, congregations, PTA, work or other community groups to come together and help these families and identify their needs and the resources that could best support them.
- Become a Foster Parent: For children who need to enter foster care because they cannot stay safely with their families, there is a critical need for high-quality foster families who can provide the love and support these children and their birth families need to thrive. Learn more about how you can become a foster parent.