What Do We Do?

<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="65001"%> What Do We Do?

What Are Our Goals and Objectives

The overall focus of The Children’s Council is to coordinate, integrate, and expand prevention efforts in Los Angeles County for children, youth, and families. In 2008–2009, we have five specific strategic goals:

Strategy	Goal
Strategy 1: Support the implementation of Los Angeles County’s Prevention Initiative Demonstration Project throughout the SPAs.	Objectives: Establish 32 additional neighborhood action councils (four per SPA Council) to build community capacity and help decrease social isolation within communities. • Every Service Planning Area Council created at least four new Neighborhood Action Councils (NACs), with some SPA Councils able to create even more. • There are now 115 Neighborhood Action Councils in Los Angeles County, with over a dozen more in the process of being formed.
Strategy 2: Implement short-term demonstration projects and develop policies and procedures to highlight and/or institutionalize promising prevention ideas.	Objectives: Develop at least two Outcome Area Roundtables by January 15, 2009, that would each focus on one of the County’s outcome areas for child well-being. These Roundtables would support/build on/connect existing efforts in that outcome area and/or come up with at least one doable action that would make a positive difference for children and families in the short term. • Economic Well-Being Roundtable: —Through a partnership with the Greater Los Angeles Economic Alliance, networks of NACs helped establish 35 free tax preparation sites throughout the county and made sure that their members and neighbors took advantage of their services. Approximately 5,000 EITC returns were filed, with $5 million going directly into the pockets of low-income families. All eight SPA Councils and their associated NACs participated. —Sixty residents have been trained on how to start their own home businesses and ten businesses have already been launched. —The Roundtable is now exploring the idea of establishing year-round economic resource hubs in each SPA which, in addition to tax preparation, will offer more comprehensive financial, business, housing, child care, job, and child support services. • Good Health Roundtable: —A policy statement has been inserted into the County General Plan Update that supports the expansion of community gardens and urban farming programs. In addition, an implement- ation action has been included in the Plan that would identify County-owned parcels and other potential sites for community gardens. —Parks and Recreation Smart Gardening Learning Centers have agreed to train resident groups interested in creating gardens. —Public Works has agreed to identify vacant County land that can be used for gardens by interested NACs.
Strategy 3: Help clarify and support coordination of the work of the County’s children’s commissions in the prevention arena to facilitate our achieving more significant results.	Objectives: Convene the County’s seven children’s commissions/councils by April 15, 2009, and determine how they can—collectively and individually, using their unique missions, positioning, and resources—more strongly support at least one ongoing prevention effort or contribute to a new joint primary prevention effort. • The County’s seven child-focused commissions (The Children’s Council, the Commission for Children and Families, the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, the Policy Roundtable for Child Care, the First 5 LA Commission, the Child Support Advisory Board, and the Education Coordinating Council) have met three times since March, with a fourth meeting scheduled for the beginning of June. • The commissions have agreed to work together on the focus area of prevention, building on/coordinating/integrating current initiatives. They will begin by holding a summit of children’s and child-related entities this fall, with the goal of summit participants endorsing and agreeing to work together to achieve four or five measurable outcomes during the year related to existing prevention initiatives in the county.
Strategy 4: Design and gather community-based data that would drive/enable more effective prevention program planning.	Objectives: Re-establish the Council’s Data Partnership by March 1, 2009, and ask it to determine how to more effectively generate and utilize meaningful community-based data that would be published in the Council’s 2010 Children’s ScoreCard, as well as how to identify methods for gathering key prevention program planning information (i.e., participation in high-quality early childhood education programs and after-school activities). In the fall of 2008, the Council convened First 5 research staff and a group of independent and university-based researchers/evaluators who are working on a host of prevention initiatives. This group —which has evolved into a new Data Partnership— has identified and agreed on a set of performance measures and protocols for the prevention-oriented research they are conducting and are now determining measures of the impact of community-building work on child and family well-being. A sub-group will then decide which of these measures can be used as a possible foundation for the Council’s 2010 Children’s ScoreCard.
Strategy 5: Strengthen the financial security of The Children’s Council through a more diversified funding base.	Objectives: Secure commitments for additional non-county funds by July 1, 2009. • Three individuals with strong business and/or philanthropic community connections have joined the board of directors of The Children’s Council Foundation, Inc. • The Foundation established a policy requesting each board member to make and/or secure a significant financial donation to support the work of The Children’s Council. Several board members have subsequently made personal donations and one helped lay the groundwork for a Foundation grant request. • The Foundation created a new Vice-President office that will champion and oversee the Foundation’s board development and fundraising goals. • The board of directors elected David Grannis to serve as Vice President. Grannis is now drafting a development plan that will guide the further expansion and diversification of the Foundation’s board of directors and direct its fundraising efforts. • The Foundation received a grant of $75,000 from the Marguerite Casey Foundation to provide broad-based leadership development opportunities to parents and youth in South Los Angeles in 2009 and submitted a $100,000 proposal to the Weingart Foundation for core support.