At the core of all of Casey's major investments is the premise that improving future opportunities for vulnerable children requires helping parents secure the resources, connections, and skills they need to support, nurture, and provide for them today. The Casey Foundation believes, and works to promote, the notion that children’s success is inextricably connected to the strength and resourcefulness of their families. Yet, while families are the most critical support in a child’s life, the reality is that as a nation we continue to craft programs, practices, and policies aimed at improving outcomes for children and youth without consideration of family context, family needs, family involvement, and family influence.
This need to think about families when we think about kids—and the importance of helping vulnerable families do better by and for their kids—is at the heart of what we mean by “family strengthening” and why we promote it as one of the most critical principles of our work. We’ve put a premium on “permanent family connections” in all of our direct services work and in our child welfare reform initiatives. This “family centric” approach is fundamental to how we approach change-making efforts in all of our project areas serving children, youth, families, and communities.
Strengthening families is also the underlying perspective driving our investments designed to encourage critical audiences—major nonprofits, civic leaders, philanthropies—to support programs, shape policies, and spend resources in ways that recognize the central role that families play in helping kids succeed. We try to recognize and promote programs and organizations that have made family strengthening a priority. We also forge partnerships with national civic and policy groups in an effort to influence their thinking and build their capacity to promote family strengthening as a key strategy and a valued outcome to their constituents.
Related Initiatives
FAMILIES COUNT: Family Strengthening Awards
The Family Strengthening Awards Program is targeted to several national nonprofit umbrella organizations that have local or regional affiliates. Working closely with the Foundation, these national groups select and reward the best family strengthening and family economic success programs to be found within their respective networks. Our grants provide funding for monetary rewards and dissemination activities. Partner organizations that are encouraging family strengthening work among their regional affiliates include Catholic Charities, USA; Volunteers of America; and YMCA of the USA.
FAMILIES COUNT: National Honors Program
Casey's Families Count awards give organizations significant dollars and public recognition so that they can continue to build upon the outstanding work they do. Our grantees are high capacity, exemplary organizations that represent working models of effective family strengthening practice. They also provide effective, real-life examples and models of the work that Casey hopes our other grantees and the field as a whole will learn from and emulate.
Making Connections
Making Connections is Casey’s multi-year, multi-site effort to improve the lives and prospects of families and children living in some of America’s toughest neighborhoods. It is based on the premise that children do well when their families are strong and families do better when they live in supportive communities.
Family Economic Success
The Foundation invests heavily in a set of approaches and projects collectively called Family Economic Success that reflect our premise that improving the economic status of families is the key to improving child outcome. These efforts address the multiple factors needed to help families find and keep work, save and grow finances, and build assets to secure better futures for their children.
Special Interest Areas: Helping America’s Most Vulnerable Families Succeed
The Casey Foundation is raising national awareness about the issues facing particular groups of disadvantaged families who face even tougher odds than most. These particular families face hurdles that make economic self-sufficiency and long-term success especially difficult to achieve. Our work in this area focuses on faith-based initiatives, formerly incarcerated parents, responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage, immigrant and refugee families, rural families, and Southwest border and native families.
Promoting Family Strengthening Through Partnerships with National Nonprofits
Casey has forged partnerships through investments with national nonprofits that enable us to work with influential organizations that have broad membership, significant numbers of affiliates, and highly credible spokespeople on issues related to kids, families, and communities. They help us achieve our goals by building a critical mass of committed champions who are willing to adopt our family strengthening principles, goals, and strategies as part of their work and advocacy. Our current partners include: Alliance for Children and Families, Corporate Voices for Working Families, National Human Services Assembly, Points of Light Foundation, United Way of America, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.
Promoting Family Strengthening Through Partnerships with Public Policy Organizations
By supporting leading national policy organizations, Casey hopes to focus their attention on policies, programs, and practices that strengthen families living in tough neighborhoods and enhance their economic success. These organizations are selected for their capacity to lead change and our assessment of their willingness to make family strengthening a priority on their agenda. They currently include the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National League of Cities, the National Governors’ Association, the National Association of Counties, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and others.
Promoting Family Strengthening Through Partnerships with Philanthropy
Casey is committed to helping funders already engaged in place-based change and family strengthening efforts to grow and deepen their work. We provide support to small foundations with shared interests and help them to disseminate the insights and lessons that arise from their on-going work. For example, with support from Casey, the Association of Small Foundations developed ten self-directed learning modules related to family and community strengthening in 2006 that engaged representatives from more than 150 small foundations throughout the year.