• Child Welfare / Permanence
• Community Change
• Center for Family Economic Success
• Education
• Health
• Juvenile Justice
• Special Interest Areas
• Digital Stories

• Providing Direct Services
• Reforming Public Systems
• Providing Strategic Consulting
• Transforming Neighborhoods
• Strengthening Families
• Building Economic Success
• Using Data & Evaluation
• Ensuring Racial & Ethnic Equity

• Child Welfare / Permanence
• Community Change
• Economic Security
• Education
• Juvenile Justice

Casey's Focus

Family Economic Success

With over a dozen Casey grantees in the affected Gulf Coast Region, the Foundation’s immediate focus has been exploring ways to make these grants more flexible to support the recovery process.

Losses to the extended Casey family have, to date, been limited to property and personal effects, some extensive and emotionally devastating. The storm has caused particular upheaval in New Orleans, where several grantees or sub-grantees have been forced to close or relocate outside the city. Hope Credit Union, which was looted, closed its office. Agenda for Children, Louisiana’s KIDS COUNT grantee, has relocated. The ASHE Cultural Center, a longtime Making Connections partner, sustained flood damage. The office of New Orleans' public television station, WYES-TV, suffered damage. People’s Institute, one of the foremost anti-racism training and organizing institutions in the nation, lost its headquarters.

For some grantees, the most pressing need is to reconnect with longtime clients and to serve new clients, providing emergency cash, relocation services, and job placement. Some grantees also need help paying their employees' health care benefits or extra work hours. Others need clean-up help.

While still working to determine the post-hurricane status of the region’s grantees, the Foundation is discussing several immediate and short-term recommendations to respond. A Casey workgroup focusing on assisting our "extended family" has contacted all staff, grantees, and consultants in the Gulf Region and made preliminary recommendations about how to make our grant agreements, reporting, and scopes of work more flexible. Program officers are working with individual grantees to identify their needs, and the group will continue to explore ways to gather information about the health and welfare of grantees and partners and other ways that the Foundation can be helpful.