Our members are leaders in the field of protecting vulnerable children. 

The newly merged Alliance and COA and resulting new organization will convene and catalyze a dynamic, inclusive, multifaceted network of human/social services organizations that leverages the collective experience of the field and research to spark a current in the sector and drive continuous evolution and improvement. Our goal is to activate the power of the social sector and create a unified, intrepid, just, and purposeful network that propels our field forward so all people can thrive. The new organization will provide a range of offerings and learnings to actively shape the future of the sector through public policy, advocacy, knowledge exchange, certification, accreditation, connection, and ongoing iterative and reflective interactions. Within Our Reach is an office established within the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities to further the recommendations of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities. The goal of Within Our Reach is to equip policymakers, practitioners, and advocates with the tools they need to fundamentally reform child welfare. Based on the commission’s national strategy, desired reform includes a proactive public health approach—a shared family and community responsibility to keep children safe. Within Our Reach is made possible through collaboration with Casey Family Programs, whose mission is to provide, improve, and prevent the need for foster care.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an organization of 67,000 pediatricians, pediatric medical sub-specialists, and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to attaining optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. AAP supports the professional needs of its nearly 70,000 members in various ways, including through education, policy, and advocacy support. Since 1930 the AAP has been advocating and working to address health care access effectively, health disparities, and social determinants of health, and continues to do to this day.

Safety, permanency, and well-being are the critical precepts that guide the work and mission of the child welfare system and is why pediatricians play an important role in advocating for child welfare policies that will best address the needs of children, youth, and families. For years, AAP’s Council on Child Abuse and Neglect and the Council on Foster Care, Adoption and Kinship Care have provided their expertise, support, and technical assistance to inform key child welfare legislation, such as the AAP-supported Family First Prevention Services Act. Pediatricians bring a unique voice to the child welfare policy conversation because their expertise allows them to: 1) speak to the science of child development; 2) emphasize the long-term health implications that adverse childhood experiences have on children; and 3) advocate for a variety of health care needs of children and youth.

The AAP is committed to working collaboratively with other child welfare stakeholders to serve as effectively as possible as a champion for solid child welfare policies that ensure all children, youth, and families have access to the resources they need to succeed.

The American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law improves children's lives through advances in law, justice, knowledge, practice and public policy.  The Center is a full-service technical assistance, training, and research program addressing a broad spectrum of law and court-related topics affecting children.

The American Psychological Association (APA) is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with more than 118,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.

The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), now in partnership with The New York Foundling, was founded in 1987, is a nonprofit national organization focused on meeting the needs of professionals engaged in all aspects of services for maltreated children and their families. The mission of APSAC is to improve society’s response to the abuse and neglect of its children by promoting effective interdisciplinary approaches to identification, intervention, treatment and prevention of child maltreatment.

Center for Children and Family Futures (CCFF) strives to prevent child abuse and neglect while improving equitable safety, permanency, well-being and recovery outcomes for all children, parents and families affected by trauma, substance use and mental health disorders. Through this grant, we are committed to building upon our existing services, infrastructure, and strategic efforts, including operating the National FTC Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program under the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare (NCSACW), and the National Quality Improvement Center for Collaborative Community Court Teams (QIC-CCCT). CCFF provides family-centered training and technical assistance (TTA) that focuses on infants, children, youth, adolescents, parents, family members, and the family as a unit who are affected by substance use and mental disorders. CCFF delivers specialized TTA at the intersections among child welfare, mental health, substance use disorder treatment, and court systems.

Founded by Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson in 1959, Childhelp® has brought the light of hope and healing into the lives of more than 11 million children as a leading national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping abused, neglected and at-risk children. Childhelp’s programs and services include residential treatment, children’s advocacy centers, therapeutic foster care, group homes and child abuse prevention, education and training. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline serves children and adults nationwide 24/7 through phone, text and online chat at 1-800-4-A-CHILD and ChildhelpHotline.org. For more information, visit www.childhelp.org and follow Childhelp at facebook.com/childhelp, instagram.com/childhelp and twitter.com/childhelp.

The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) is a powerful coalition of hundreds of private and public agencies that since 1920 has worked to serve children and families who are vulnerable. Our expertise, leadership and innovation on policies, programs, and practices help improve the lives of millions of children across the country. Our impact is felt worldwide.

Our focus is children and youth who may have experienced abuse, neglect, family disruption, or a range of other factors that jeopardize their safety, permanence, or well-being. CWLA also focuses on the families, caregivers, and the communities that care for and support these children. CWLA delivers creative, practical, management-focused and practice-oriented consultation and technical assistance to help child serving organizations and entities in the public and private sector achieve better outcomes for children.

Based at the nonprofit University of San Diego (USD) School of Law since 1989, the Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI) is the nation’s premiere academic, research, and advocacy organization working to improve the lives of children and youth, with special emphasis on improving the child protection, dependency court, and foster care systems and improving outcomes for youth aging out of foster care and other transition age youth populations. CAI’s academic program trains law students to be effective child advocates through substantive courses and clinical opportunities that allow them to represent the interests of children and youth before all branches of government, and to help CAI put important issues on the public agenda. Through its offices in San Diego, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., CAI’s research and advocacy component seeks to leverage change for children and youth through impact litigation, regulatory and legislative advocacy, and public education. Active primarily at the state and federal levels, CAI’s efforts are multi-faceted — comprehensively and successfully embracing all tools of public interest advocacy to improve the lives of children and youth.

As the national membership organization for state children’s trust funds, the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance’s mission is to provide supports, resources and peer connections to children’s trust funds across the country. The Alliance is a national thought and implementation leader in strengthening families and communities, preventing child abuse and neglect, building partnerships with parents, promoting parent voices regarding policies and practices and helping systems and services incorporate a strengths-based protective factors approach. We work across the social ecology and engage with parents and community members as partners to ensure diverse perspectives are recognized and valued.

The Alliance provides training and technical assistance regarding partnering with parents, including training in “Better Together” and “Strategic Sharing”. We have worked with CBCAP state lead agencies and numerous other state systems to help them develop and support formal parent advisory councils. The Alliance supports multiple networks of parents (the Alliance National Parent Partnership Council, The Birth Parent National Network and the Birth and Foster Parent Partnership) and helps build linkages between parents and policymakers. Our website is a source of publications, videos and social media-ready materials that parents have developed to promote the protective factors and how they help strengthen families.

With the goal of infusing systems and staff with skills to help families build strong protective factors, the Alliance’s nationally recognized training on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework, Bringing the Protective Factors to Life in Your Work, is available free of charge as an online interactive training. CEUs are available for a small fee. In addition, the Alliance’s intensive virtual training of trainers has resulted thus far in more than 1,500 Alliance Certified Trainers across the US who are using our curriculum (videos, audios, powerpoints, training manuals, training tools and other materials). This curriculum focuses on training those who work with families to best help parents build their own family’s protective factors and incorporates a strengths-based approach, paired with respect for cultural differences. The Alliance’s national training, technical assistance and collaborative consultation are designed to strengthen communities, programs, and systems.

Founded in 1978, Committee for Children (CFC) is a global nonprofit dedicated to fostering the safety and well-being of children through education and advocacy. We work on the federal, state, and local level to prevent child abuse, bullying, and violence, and to encourage teaching social-emotional skills to children and youth.  Our research-based social-emotional learning curricula are used in over 26,000 schools in 70 countries and have helped close to 11 million children.  CFC created one of the first prevention curricula for child sexual abuse.

The Family Focused Treatment Association (FFTA), is the leading advocate for the development, evaluation, recognition, and funding of family-focused treatment services for children and youth with social, emotional, behavioral, developmental, or medical needs. FFTA’s mission is to strengthen agencies that provide treatment family care services, whether those services are provided in treatment foster care, kinship, adoptive or birth families. FFTA supports its membership of nearly 500 organizations by advocating for treatment family care nationally; promoting program standards; providing resources, technical assistance and professional development opportunities; encouraging research and evaluation; and inspiring the development of evidence-informed practices. Visit www.ffta.org.

Futures Without Violence is a national advocacy, training and social change organization working to violence against women and children in the United States and globally. Based in San Francisco, with offices in Washington DC and Boston, FUTURES works to strengthen families and communities to reduce violence, help victims heal and thrive  and promote healthy and respectful relationships. We focus on two-generation approaches that address prevention and services to heal victims of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, child abuse and youth violence.

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world, with 132,000 members. NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of its members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies on a broad array of topics including child welfare. Historically, social workers have played critical roles in serving the most vulnerable children, youth and families.

The National Center for State Courts is an independent non-profit corporation with the mission to improve the administration of justice through leadership and service to state courts and to justice systems around the world. Founded by the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) in 1971, the NCSC is the pre-eminent judicial reform organization in the United States and a national and global leader in helping courts improve the administration of justice and delivery of services.

The NCSC is dedicated to modernizing court operations and improving justice at the state and local level throughout the country. By functioning as an extension of the state courts, the NCSC acts as a focal point for judicial modernization, serves as a catalyst for implementing standards of fair and expeditious judicial administration, and helps determine and disseminate solutions to the problems of individual courts and state judicial systems.

The NCSC’s work includes providing information, technical assistance, and consulting services to courts and other interested parties, and conducting research and evaluations in all areas of operation of the courts. The NCSC provides direct court consulting services to courts in order to improve court management performance across a broad spectrum of topical areas, including strategic planning, court leadership, caseload management, financial management, technology management, human resources, facilities, court security, jury management, and access to justice. No organization in the nation is more knowledgeable about how courts work and the application of modern management principles to court leadership, organization, and operations than the NCSC.

The National Court Appointed Special Advocate/Guardian ad Litem (CASA/GAL) Association for Children, together with its 948 state and local member programs, supports and promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy so that every child who has experienced abuse or neglect can be safe, have a permanent home and have the opportunity to thrive.

Appointed by judges, highly-trained CASA/GAL volunteers advocate in court for the best interests of children and youth, many of whom are in foster care. They work with legal and child welfare professionals, educators and service providers to ensure that judges have all the information they need to make the most well-informed decisions for each child.

Children assigned to a CASA/GAL volunteer tend to involve the most serious cases of maltreatment, in which the children are more at risk. CASA/GAL volunteers identify, recommend and ensure children receive the services that will support their well-being.  On average, a CASA/GAL volunteer remains with a child for 18 months or until the case comes to a conclusion. In some cases, the CASA/GAL volunteer may remain with a child from early childhood through their transition to adulthood.

Nationwide, more than 96,000 CASA/GAL volunteers serve 276,000 children and youth involved in the child welfare system. For the past decade, CASA/GAL volunteers have donated nearly 60 million hours advocating on behalf of children who have experienced abuse or neglect. Click here to read more about the National CASA/GAL Core Model and the role of a volunteer.

National CASA/GAL leads the continued growth and development of its extensive national network of CASA/GAL programs, each of which recruits, trains and supports volunteers.  Through a competitive grants program, National CASA/GAL awards funds to programs to build capacity, provides significant staff and volunteer training resources and provides ongoing technical assistance utilizing industry best practices regardless of program size. The organization also raises awareness of the needs of children and families in the child welfare system and the work of volunteer advocates across the country.

National CASA/GAL requires that all volunteers are thoroughly screened and participate in a minimum of 30 hours of pre-service training built on real-world case studies, covering the role of the volunteer in court, child development issues, trauma-informed care and bias awareness, among other topics. National CASA/GAL also provides training to our member network of state organizations and local programs that include pre-service training of facilitators and a racial and ethnic identity curriculum.

In 2022, National CASA will celebrate 40 years of providing best-interest advocacy on behalf of children and youth. The positive impact of a CASA or GAL volunteer can truly change a child’s story. To learn more about National CASA/GAL, visit nationalcasagal.org or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/NationalCASAGAL and @NationalCASAGAL on Twitter and Instagram.

National Children’s Alliance (NCA) is the national association and accrediting body for Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs).  Formed in 1988, NCA has been providing support, technical assistance, and quality assurance for CACs, while serving as a voice for abused children for more than 25 years.  A children’s advocacy center is a child-friendly facility in which law enforcement, child protection, prosecution, mental health, medical and victim advocacy professionals work together to investigate abuse, help children heal from abuse, and hold offenders accountable.

The National Family Support Network (NFSN) promotes positive outcomes for all children, families, and communities by leveraging the collective impact of state networks and championing quality family support and strengthening practices and policies. NFSN is a membership-based organization which currently has 29 member networks, comprised of more than 3,000 Family Support and Strengthening organizations, representing the great geographical and demographic diversity of the nation.

The National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect’s vision is to end child abuse and neglect in our lifetime. It will do so by changing the perception of child abuse and neglect in our country as social and legal problems, to also being health, mental health and public health problems that can be treated. The Foundation’s goal is also to work with others to dramatically expand funding for research, training, and prevention.

Since 1969, Parents Anonymous Inc. has implemented a strengths-based model of child abuse and neglect prevention serving millions of parents, caregivers and children of all ages in diverse communities worldwide.

Prevent Child Abuse America is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting services that improve child well-being in all 50 states and developing programs that help to prevent all types of abuse and neglect.

The Ray E. Helfer Society, founded in 1999 and named in honor of Dr. Ray E. Helfer, was originally established as an honorary society of physicians seeking to provide medical leadership regarding the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and research concerning child abuse and neglect. It has grown to be the primary sub-specialty society for physicians devoted to the problem of maltreated children.

Our Vision: Children will thrive in a society that values them.

Our Mission: To help prevent and reduce the harm resulting from child maltreatment, by advancing the work of physicians in the areas of education, clinical care, research and advocacy.

Triple P – Positive Parenting Program is a system of evidence-based parenting interventions committed to supporting all parents at the right amount, time, and place with concrete strategies to build strong relationships, promote child well-being, and confidently manage every day and more complex parenting challenges. Triple P is one of only two parenting programs identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as being supported by the strongest evidence for a parenting program’s ability to prevent child maltreatment and the only parenting support model to show community-wide effects on reducing child maltreatment, foster care placements, and physical injuries due to child maltreatment seen in emergency rooms. We work in partnership to build strong networks that provide families with supports aimed at strengthening communities so that all children, parents, and families are thriving, resilient and reaching their full potential.

Within Our Reach is an office established within the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and Council on Accreditation to further the recommendations of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities. Within Our Reach is made possible through collaboration with Casey Family Programs, whose mission is to provide, improve—and ultimately prevent the need for—foster care.  The goal of Within Our Reach is to equip policymakers, practitioners, and advocates with the tools they need to fundamentally reform child welfare. 

Zero to Three (ZTT) works to ensure that babies and toddlers benefit from the early connections that are critical to their well-being and development.  ZTT’s mission is to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life.