Strategy |
Goal |
Strategy 1:
Support the
implementation of Los Angeles County’s Prevention Initiative Demonstration
Project throughout the SPAs. |
Objectives:
Establish 36 additional neighborhood
action councils (four per SPA/AIC Council) to build community capacity
and help decrease social isolation within communities.
• Every Service Planning Area Council and the
American Indian
Children’s 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,
as well as the
American Indian
Children’s Council.
—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. |
