Council on Reform
Creating a Council on Reform, where 13 localities served as change leaders and innovators, served as a vital first step to getting Virginia’s 100 independent local organizations involved in reform.
This report tells how Virginia’s leaders and the Annie E. Casey Foundation worked together to pull off the near impossible: They won over jaded frontline workers to build a new child welfare system from scratch—and make it stick. Today, this family-focused system is driven by data, teeming with best practices and serves as a magnet for collaboration and local innovation (Another bonus? It’s saved Virginians $100 million in just two years).
In 2006, Virginia’s inefficient and expensive child welfare system led the nation in aging youths out of foster care without a network of support. By partnering with the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Child Welfare Strategy Group, the state turned this statistic around while instituting sweeping system-wide changes aimed at fostering stable, supportive families with no expiration date. Virginia and the Foundation hashed out a broad, two-pronged approach to reform: Part 1: Review state policies and practices; Part 2: Go local.