Fostering Change Network Foundation
Fostering Change Network (FCN) provides mentoring, training, coaching and networking opportunities to young adults who are or were in foster care to help them achieve personal and professional success. This grant funds FCN’s Support Our Foster Youth program, which provides support to foster youth who are attending college, to help them achieve their educational and career goals. FCN is developing partnerships with Baltimore City Community College, University of Baltimore, and University of Maryland College Park to address the needs of current and former foster youth attending those institutions and provide the support they need to complete their degrees. FCN is working to change the odds for youth in foster care, few of whom attend college, and when they do, they have very low rates of college completion.
The Family Tree, Inc.
The Family Tree reaches over 20,000 people a year with parenting and caregiving programs and supports. This grant provided support for the Family Tree to increase its capacity to provide Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an evidence-based parenitng intervention for caregivers of infants and toddlers who have experienced early adversity.
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Children in Baltimore, Inc.
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Baltimore provides support and advocacy for children in abuse and neglect cases in Baltimore City’s Juvenile Court. CASA recruits and trains lay volunteers who work closely with children referred by the Juvenile Court to assess their needs and make recommendations to the Court regarding the child’s placement and needed services. Research on the CASA model suggests that children with CASA volunteers are more likely to be placed in permanent homes and less likely to re-enter foster care after they achieve permanancy than children without CASA volunteers. This grant supports a new volunteer recruitment campaign, with a particular focus on increasing the number of African American CASA volunteers.
Paul’s Place, Inc.
For more than 35 years, Paul’s Place has been providing services to meet the basic needs of the residents of Pigtown and other Southwest Baltimore neighborhoods including nutritious hot meals, comprehensive emergency assistance, adult literacy, health services, and case management. Fundng from the Abell Foundation will help Paul’s Place sustain its Access to Healthy Food Program which includes the hot lunch program (serving 150-200 guests daily) and acting as a distribution site for the Department of Social Services emergency food program providing 3-5 days of shelf stable food for individuals and families.
Franciscan Center, Inc.
The Franciscan Center has served the indigent, homeless and working poor of Battimore since 1968. Throughout the Center’s 51 years of service, it has expanded its programs in direct response to the needs of its community. Funding from the Abell Foundation will support on-going emergency services for families in crisis including food, clothing, eviction prevention, utility assistance, and emergency health services.