Our Approach

Our Strategic Growth Plan

The Goal

Foster America is working toward a future where every child and family can thrive in safe, supportive communities.

That means access to help earlier, children remaining safely with the people who love them, and trusted community supports in place when families need them.

The Issue

Too often, child welfare systems respond to family challenges through investigation or separation when families need support. Challenges such as housing instability, financial hardship, unmet health needs, or limited access to community resources can lead to child welfare involvement rather than the practical, community-based support families need.

Foster America helps communities build a different response—one rooted in prevention, dignity, family well-being, and child safety.

Our Role

Foster America is a systems-change partner. We work alongside communities, public agencies, funders, and people who have experienced the child welfare system firsthand to change how families are supported.

Our Approach in Action

We co-design solutions with communities.

Families and people with lived experience know their communities, their strengths, and what gets in the way of thriving. We bring them together with community leaders and public agencies, providing the tools and support to develop and advance locally driven solutions.

We develop leaders who can move systems

Through Leadership Circles, coaching, peer learning, and practical tools, we equip leaders to work across systems and use policy, practice, funding, data, and decision-making to move resources and responses toward prevention.

We turn local learning into shared knowledge.

We translate what communities are learning into tools, trainings, stories, and practical guidance. Sharing what works—and what is still being learned—helps promising approaches spread and strengthens the broader prevention field.

We bring people together for shared action.

We provide the facilitation, coordination, and infrastructure to help lived experts, communities, public agencies, funders, advocates, and national partners build trust, align priorities, and turn collective ideas into action.

Our Work Helps Communities:

Shift policies, practices, and resources toward prevention and family well-being
Build stronger connections across systems, sectors, and communities
Center lived expertise in decisions that affect children and families
Test, improve, fund, and sustain locally driven solutions
Share learning so progress in one place can inform change elsewhere

The Future We Are Building

Across the country, communities are showing that families can be supported differently. We are working toward a future with fewer unnecessary investigations and separations—and more families receiving the support they need to stay together and thrive together.