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When Lutheran Children and Family Services of Illinois first started looking into data on its clients, black children in the state's foster care system had a permanency rate of 4% in 2018, compared to 47% in 2020.
That same year, the length of stay for black children in the state's foster care system dropped by 16%, compared to 16% for white children, according to a new Harvard study.
"We realized that implicit bias and institutional racism were influencing inequitable outcomes for children of color,"Beverly Jones, vice president and COO of LCFS of Illinois, says in a Lutheran Services in America press release.
That's why, after reviewing its own statewide and agency data, LCFS of Illinois focused on training its staff to look at how their biases may contribute to disparate outcomes.
Among other things, LCFS of Illinois focused on training staff to learn and rehearse best practice techniques to improve engagement with families and to utilize those learnings in all familial meetings.
It also focused on working with the judicial system to better navigate court processes and advocate within the courts on behalf of families of color, LGBTQ youth, and other societal biases impacting their clients.
"Looking to the future, there needs to be a shift in focus within the child welfare system from intervention to prevention," Jones said.
Selected Grant News Headlines
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
Foundation: Community Foundation of Broward
Ten nonprofit organizations in South Florida are getting a total of $300,000 in grants thanks to a new fund meant to fight discrimination in the LGBTQ community. The Our Fund Foundation and the...more
Badari Ambatti and his wife, Roopa Hhaprakash, moved from Bengaluru, India, to Garden City Park in New York about 10 years ago, and since then, they've made a home for themselves and their daughter,...more
"People used to go swimming in it, and then how grateful [they] are for the work that we're doing in conjunction with the government and other organizations," Mike Smith tells This Week in...more
"No matter how hard we work, until we get our capital aligned, we're not going to fix the problems," Cory Donovan, executive director of ImpactPHL, tells Technical.ly. That's why the nonprofit in...more
Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences recently honored three of its alumni with 2024 Outstanding Alumni Awards.Vijay Nandula, of Overland Park, Kansas, was this year's recipient of the...more
If you're looking for a way to boost your community's sense of place, researchers at Gustavson University in Sweden have just the thing. They've developed a set of five principles that community...more
Foundation: Changemakers
The US may be the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide, but the European Union is No. 1 when it comes to researching and developing green technologies. In fact, the EU is No. 1 when it...more
When Brazil takes over the presidency of the G20 in 2024, it will be the first country to do so from the developing world. But a new report from the Chatham House think tank warns that Brazil...more
When Josh Fryday joined the California Service Corps as a 17-year-old high school senior, he never imagined he'd end up as the state's chief service officer. But that's about to change. The...more
Google has a new privacy-related headache to deal with: its own self-driving car. In a blog post, the company explains that it plans to start testing its own self-driving car in the US next year,...more
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A Bar That Saves Children’s Lives
Ryan Devlin, Todd Grinnell and Ravi Patel have traveled to Africa on a humanitarian trip a few years back, encountering children suffering from severe malnutrition get healthy through Plumpy’Nut®.
