The Fund for Social Change is a public foundation founded in 2002 to use philanthropy to increase the influence and improve the well-being of disempowered people in New York City, including poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, and young people.

START (Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams)

The New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS), in partnership with the Fund for Social Change, is launching a Bronx-based pilot of a nationally-recognized approach to working with caregivers who abuse substances and their children. Recognizing the challenges that families face when they are simultaneously involved in the child welfare and substance abuse treatment systems, START provides a team of a child welfare worker and family mentor, to work with caregivers to keep children safe, to help caregivers overcome their substance abuse, and to make sure that children are growing up in permanent and nurturing families.

The Fund for Social Change is recruiting and employing Family Mentors to work as members of the ACS START team in the Bronx. Drawing on personal experience as a former client of the child welfare system and/or as a person in recovery, Family Mentors provide support to START clients.

To view the START Family Mentor Job Description, please click here.

To APPLY to be a Family Mentor, please click here.

The Child Welfare Fund provides grants to nonprofit organizations that address system-wide problems in child welfare or offer direct services to children and families.

The OMRDD/FAR Fund Collaborative works to transform agency cultures and to assist individuals on the autistic spectrum so they have more person centered lives as they transition to adulthood and independence.

The Partnership for Family Supports and Justice: Bridge Builders is a collaboration of 15 foundations and the Administration for Children’s Services. It is testing a new neighborhood-based collaborative approach in which neighbors assist families experiencing difficulties to prevent foster care placement.

The Parent Advocate Initiative (PAI) is a collaboration of six foundations, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, and the Child Welfare Organizing Project. We are promoting the hiring of Parent Advocates by foster care agencies. Parent Advocates in the child welfare system are parents who have had their children removed to foster care and have successfully reunified with them, and who subsequently choose to be trained and to work within the child welfare system. They humanize the child welfare system by giving voice to parents’ experiences and incorporating their own experiences into practice.

To view the PAI Request for Proposals, please click here.
To view the PAI Workplan and Monitoring Matrix, please click here.
For more information on Parent Advocates, click here.

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