The Annie E. Casey Foundation has awarded grants to 18 local nonprofits through its 2013 Baltimore Direct Services Grants (BDSG) program. The selected organizations will receive a combined $325,000 to provide summer activities and programs for hundreds of disadvantaged city youths.

The BDSG program began in 1995 and has supported a wide range of innovative ideas and practices for children and families throughout the city. The 2013 grants will give youth opportunities to get practical work experience, participate in academic and cultural enrichment and develop life and leadership skills. Many of the programs are geared toward particularly vulnerable children, such as those who are homeless or academically at risk.

“The programs selected this year abound with wonderful opportunities for city youth to continue learning during the summer and even discover new skills that will serve them well throughout their lives,” said Sophie Dagenais, director of the Casey Foundation’s Baltimore Civic Site. “We’re thrilled to support activities that help children and families thrive.”

• View the list of 18 nonprofits awarded Annie E. Casey Foundation grants

Updated research underscores the urgency of ensuring that children develop proficient reading skills by the end of third grade, especially those living in poverty or in impoverished communities, according to a new report, Early Warning Confirmed: A Research Update on Third-Grade Reading, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

In 2010, the Foundation published Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters, a report that laid out the research basis for focusing on reading proficiency by the end of third grade as an essential step toward increasing the number of children who succeed academically and do well in life and their career. That report also launched the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a network of national and local civic leaders, policymakers, advocates, community organizations and everyday people that focuses on community solutions, quality teaching and strong systems of early education. Since the launch, 124 communities have joined the campaign.

Early Warning Confirmed supports the link between reading deficiencies and broader social consequences, including how living in poor households and high-poverty neighborhoods contributes to racial disparities in literacy skills in this country and how low achievement in reading impacts an individual’s future earning potential. 

• View the Early Warning Confirmed executive summary
• Read the Early Warning Confirmed full report
• Access the news release about the report

As a senior associate in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for Community and Economic Opportunity, Beadsie Woo works on strategies to help vulnerable families build and protect their assets to become more financially stable. Woo coauthored Weathering the Recession: The Financial Crisis and Family Wealth Changes in Low-Income Neighborhoods, a report that explored what happened to assets, debts and home equity for families living in low-income neighborhoods during the Great Recession.

In this installment of Five Questions with Casey, Woo discusses the challenges youth in foster care face in protecting their credit and what professionals can do to help them overcome identity theft.

Read our interview with Beadsie Woo.

Making Connections, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s signature place-based  community change initiative, ran from 1999 through 2010 and focused on firmly developing a family-strengthening framework. The effort led to a range of innovations in the community change field, as well as started and strengthened many local initiatives.

Making Connections’ positive outcomes are still influencing Casey and the broader field. In many notable cases, the programs and partnerships created during the initiative continue to thrive. Assessments of the initiative already have produced a variety of lessons on program development, implementation, evaluation
and other topics, with valuable implications for practitioners, public policymakers, funders and others involved in community development.

This report takes a step back and outlines key findings from the initiative that can provide guidance to those involved with community change efforts in the future. These principles can serve as guideposts at an exciting time in the community development field.

Read Community Change: Lessons Learned from Making Connections

States seeking to strengthen their kinship care policies and practices now have several new tools to guide their work. A new report, The Kinship Diversion Debate: Policy and Practice Implications for Children, Families and Child Welfare Agencies, explores different perspectives on the practice of diverting children from child welfare.

Two additional publications, Kinship Process Mapping: Improving Practice in Kinship Care and a User’s Guide to Essential Kinship Data provide guidance on steps states can take to ensure the safety, stability and permanence for all children who are not able to live with their parents.