Prioritizing Families and Communities
Children and youth belong in families and communities. Our advocacy is driven by the fundamental belief that every child deserves to grow up in a safe and stable home and receive love and nurturance. Our work reimagines care for system-involved youth by ensuring high-quality parenting, reducing reliance on institutional placements, and creating family and community-based alternatives to institutionalization and incarceration. Through partnership with caregivers, providers, and public agencies, we are reshaping systems to prioritize connection, continuity, and care.
Advocacy Initiatives
Impact Stories
2025: A Bold New Vision for Foster Care
Assembly Bill 896 (Elhawary), co-sponsored by the Youth Law Center and the County Welfare Directors Association of California, would require each county child welfare agency to create its own child-centered, developmentally informed transition policies. These policies must be designed with input from youth and families and include clear steps to protect relationships, plan thoughtfully, and maintain the continuity children need during a transition. The bill also tasks the California Department of Social Services with sharing best practices from QPI sites to guide this work across the state.
2024: Youth Law Center Hosts Convening of Adolescent Development Researchers and Individuals with Lived Experience
In October, the Youth Law Center hosted a significant convening in Minnesota that brought together youth who had experienced foster care as teenagers, along with foster parents, birth parents, and relatives who have parented teens in foster care. The multi-generational group conducted an in-depth review of a draft paper, developed from a February convening of leading national researchers on healthy adolescent development. Drawing on their lived experiences, the participants offered valuable, practical guidance on how foster care systems can apply the research findings to improve policies and practices.
2024: Youth Law Center’s Quality Parenting Advocacy Attracts International Attention
In May, our Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI) hosted a delegation from the Nippon Foundation, a major social innovation organization in Japan, to share its learnings over three decades of its advocacy work to end the use of institutions for infants and toddlers in foster care in the United States. QPI was one of just three projects in North America this delegation identified as the top advocacy change makers during its global tour of fact finding and information gathering about foster care systems worldwide.
2024: Youth Law Center’s Kristina Tanner Discusses California Governor Newsom’s Investment in the Future of Youth in Foster Care in New Op-Ed
“Without basketball, I doubt I would have been able to work through the trauma I experienced. The sport gave me an outlet for my emotions and a way to process my experiences constructively. It also provided a sense of belonging and community, which was crucial for my emotional well-being. Foster kids need the stability, trust and sense of belonging that extracurricular activities can provide. But many foster families simply don’t have the resources to make that possible.”
Read this from our Special Projects Coordinator, Krista Tanner, on the importance of California’s new law investing in foster youth
