The Casey Foundation is raising national awareness about the issues facing particular groups of disadvantaged families who face even tougher odds than most. These families face hurdles that make economic self-sufficiency and long-term success especially difficult to achieve.
We believe, given their circumstances, that it’s important to devote special attention to identifying the best strategies, programs, and policies that cities, states, and neighborhoods can use to improve the lives of these parents and their children.
Children With Incarcerated Parents
Children with incarcerated parents are particularly vulnerable because not only are they faced with the trauma of loss, but also the myriad economic and social challenges that parental incarceration can bring. The goals of the Casey Foundation’s work in this field are to support and promote effective responses to these challenges.
Faith-Based Initiatives
Many families place more trust in faith-based organizations than they do in any other community institution. We support faith-based initiatives in their efforts to meet the needs of vulnerable children and families.
Incarceration and Re-entry Into Communities
Annually, close to 7.5 million men and women who are released from incarceration return to their communities and attempt to reintegrate back into family and community life. The Casey Foundation is working to strengthen the communities that former prisoners return to and improve the social and economic prospects of the children and caregivers these individuals left behind.
Immigrants and Refugees
Our vision is for vulnerable immigrant children and families to succeed in learning English and have access to high quality, low cost social and financial services in their native languages in order to become productive family members and members of their communities.
Responsible Fatherhood/Healthy Marriage
In communities across the country, too many kids are growing up without fathers. To help reverse this trend, we make investments to promote responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage to provide long-term stability for children.
Strengthening Rural Families
By promoting family economic success and using strategies to strengthen families, we are building bridges that can span the percieved geographic divide between urban and rural communities.
Southwest Border and Indian Families
Child poverty rates in Southwest Border and Indian communities are often higher than in the poorest big cities and, according to our KIDS COUNT indicators, children do worse than their mainstream counterparts on nine of our ten core national indices. We support family economic success to improve the lives of children and families in these communities.