In 2023, we saw a greater sense of optimism and hope as the pandemic that disrupted our lives and harmed countless families entered a new phase. Normality began to return. Even more promising, the significant public investments made during the crisis bolstered families, lifting some 5.2 million children out of poverty before lapsing. This was proof that investing in families could make life better for children.
It was an exciting year for the Casey Foundation too, as we celebrated several remarkable milestones. First, we entered our 75th year of service to children, youth and families. In addition, two of our signature programs — the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative and the Children and Family Fellowship — marked 30 years of transformative leadership.
Throughout the year, we continued to sharpen our focus, better aligning our work for younger children and families with our investments for older youth and young adults — which we call Thrive by 25. In doing so, we identified five key areas that we believe are critical for young people to thrive, from birth through young adulthood: basic needs; permanent relationships; financial stability; early care, education and credentials; and community and youth leadership. We believe these core areas are deeply intertwined and that working to simultaneously improve outcomes in all of them is critical to the future for all children and youth.
This report captures some of the results we achieved in 2023 across these five areas. I hope it gives you a better sense of the Foundation’s mission, priorities and approach, as well as the ways we track our progress.
During the year, we highlighted two important issues that merit greater attention and innovation by leaders, policymakers and practitioners:
In partnership with the U.S. Surgeon General, we hosted a national convening on youth mental health, bringing together over 200 community and youth leaders to learn from each other and identify solutions to the large and growing number of young people reporting persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
The 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book highlighted the complex crisis in child care that leaves parents, employers, child care workers and providers all struggling. It’s a broken system and one that will take collective action to fix.
We look forward to partnering with others across sectors to reverse these trends.
Our goal is to change the odds so that all kids can succeed, not just help a select few beat them. This is difficult work, and it often takes years — sometimes decades — to fully take hold given competing priorities, financial disincentives and implementation challenges. But we see the impact our work can have, and we know our progress, however incremental, has the power to change lives.
We won’t give up. Together, we will keep working to create a brighter future for all of America’s children, youth, families and communities.
Lisa M. Hamilton
President & CEO Lisa Hamilton discusses the Casey Foundation's work
What Guides Us
Across its investments, the Casey Foundation holds a set of collective operating principles and priorities. These approaches are the foundation of our organizational culture and define how we partner with others.
Embracing Data
Data provide insights that enable better decision-making across all levels of the organization. The Foundation invests in public data collection and promotes the use of disaggregated data to help tackle inequities and raise the bar for all children.
Holding a Long-Term Vision
The Foundation focuses on complex issues created by deeply rooted inequities. We know that addressing them can take time, and we must keep the long view in mind.
Prioritizing Innovation
Casey uses its resources to advance research, innovative solutions and system reforms that help kids, young people, families and communities thrive. Not every innovation works, but we must try to holistically change the odds for entire groups of young people.
Advancing Equity and Inclusion
Casey is dedicated to improving the well-being of all children in the United States while closing the gaps for children and youth of color and connecting all to opportunity on the road to adulthood. We know that disparate outcomes will not be eliminated without intentional focus.
Bringing People Together
To achieve our desired results, Casey must influence a diverse set of allies across places, political lines and sectors to invest in the most effective strategies.
Focusing on Scale
The Foundation focuses on bringing the best ideas to scale to effect as many children and families as possible.
While we know that other issues are also important to child and family well-being, these investment areas align with the Foundation’s long-held expertise in child welfare, juvenile justice and economic opportunity and have the most potential to spark change.
In 2023, the Foundation partnered with nearly 900 organizations, investing more than $98.5 million to find solutions to our nation’s most persistent social issues. We invested in programs and services, advanced research and piloted new solutions and system reforms to help children and their families overcome barriers to success. Our ideas were strengthened by doing work in and with communities through local partnerships that helped demonstrate what works. We then used our investments in evaluation, leadership development, partnerships, communications and policy advocacy to try to influence others to invest in the most effective strategies based on solid evidence. Ultimately, we hope to take the best ideas to scale, helping them reach as many children and families as possible.
While the following results are not exhaustive, they provide a snapshot of our collective progress and future promise.
Basic Needs
Through program, policy and practice change, Casey helps children, young people and families meet their basic needs, including housing, food, safety, physical and mental health, transportation and child care.
In 2023:
Grantees engaged in coalitions that informed policymakers in strengthening the safety net for children and families. Fourteen states expanded or enacted child tax credits, which estimates show benefited nearly 5 million families. North Carolina and North Dakota approved Medicaid expansion, helping 652,000 families.
To help maximize federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds, a grant to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project helped states deliver emergency rental assistance to nearly 5.2 million low-income households in 26 states and the District of Columbia.
In Baltimore City, partners delivered access to transitional housing, mentoring and paid internships to 746 young people experiencing homelessness. Thrive By 25
With Casey’s help, DePaul University has expanded the use of Act and Adapt, an evidence-based mental health intervention for Latino and Black adolescents, serving 704 students in 2023.
The Foundation funded Complete College America to help 25 to 30 predominantly Black postsecondary institutions better understand their students, help them move toward graduation and connect young people with support in accessing basic needs. Thrive By 25
We helped the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) construct and sell six affordable townhomes in southwest Atlanta. We also helped ANDP finance more than 300 affordable housing units, as well as home repairs for 25 residents who are elderly or have low incomes.
Bringing Mental Health Solutions to Middle Schools
Addressing the mental health crisis among adolescents in underserved communities is critical to supporting their overall well-being. And with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, DePaul University Professor Antonio Polo is evaluating and expanding Act and Adapt, a program that identifies middle schoolers who are showing signs of depression or anxiety and connects them with resources.
Rates of depression rise sharply in early adolescence, yet many youth — particularly those who are Black or Latino — go untreated. Recent data show that among adolescents who had experienced at least one major depressive episode, Latino youth were 23% less likely and Black youth were 21% less likely to receive treatment than their White, non-Hispanic peers.
Act and Adapt, developed for ethnic minority early adolescents, utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help students identify and manage daily stressors. Groups of five to six students meet with facilitators such as school counselors to learn coping skills and strategies for the challenges they can control (Act) versus those to which they must adapt. Assessments show students exhibit fewer depression symptoms after completing the program.
Since partnering with Chicago Public Schools in 2017, more than 339 providers have been trained across 158 schools. These providers have run 430 groups serving more than 2,300 students. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education recently boosted DePaul University’s training effort with a $4.2 million grant aimed at increasing the number of diverse counselors in the school district and supporting their training to deliver Act and Adapt.
With Casey's support, Act and Adapt is now developing a centralized online platform to track implementation, collect data and facilitate expansion to more school districts, including Providence [Rhode Island] Public Schools in partnership with Casey grantee Children and Youth Cabinet Rhode Island.
By prioritizing evidence-based mental health services, the Act and Adapt program is one innovation that is creating a model for supporting the well-being of underserved youth across the country.
Permanent Relationships
Casey invests in ensuring children, youth and young adults — especially those involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems who have been disconnected from opportunity — have strong, permanent connections with caring family members and other supportive relationships with adults in their community. This work often means funding innovations and demonstrating better practices to improve how child welfare and juvenile justice systems operate and to prevent young people from being involved in those systems in the first place.
In 2023:
With Casey Family Programs, the Foundation continued support for a national campaign to end the need for child welfare group placements — which are developmentally harmful — by 2030. In jurisdictions working with the Casey Foundation on this issue, 37% fewer young people were placed in congregate care between 2018 and 2021.
As a result of Casey’s intensive consultation with the South Carolina Department of Social Services, the agency increased kin placements by 51% in 2023 — drastically reducing the number of children in group settings.
Sites working with the Foundation to transform juvenile probation continued to make strong progress, collectively decreasing confinement by 63% since their baseline years. In 2023 alone, confinement as a punishment for probation rule breaking dropped by 74%, meaning more children remained with their families in communities. Thrive By 25
Twenty-two sites — including state, county and sovereign tribal jurisdictions in which 24 million children live — are now part of the Thriving Families, Safer Children movement to reduce the need for child welfare placements in favor of community responses. Casey is supporting the partnership and providing expertise to systems in rethinking foster care.
Casey funded three jurisdictions to implement Columbia University’s Emerging Adult Justice Project, which tests innovative approaches to better serve people ages 18 to 25 involved in the criminal justice system based on adolescent brain science. Thrive By 25
Financial Stability
The Foundation aims to give parents and young people access to traditional employment or entrepreneurship and customized financial tools that enable them to achieve financial stability and well-being. This work involves shifting public policies and workforce development systems to better meet the needs of youth and families who face barriers to financial stability.
Grantee TrustPlus provided financial coaching across the country to 239 young workers in 2023, helping them collectively build $820,000 in savings and pay down a total of $4.7 million in debt.
In 2023, 3,573 young people in foster care in 17 states were able to save more than $889,674 through the Foundation’s Opportunity Passport matched-savings program, supporting their purchase of 638 assets, including cars, housing and school expenses. Thrive By 25
In Maryland, grantee Job Opportunities Task Force successfully advocated for two new pieces of legislation that reduce barriers to employment. The first makes it easier to expunge nonviolent criminal records, and the second expands the number of people who can secure a professional license.
We supported several grantees who successfully expanded access to state safety net benefits. For example, the efforts of the Children’s Action Alliance in Arizona resulted in all student parents being eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
During the 2023–24 school year, Albuquerque-based Future Focused Education provided 462 high school students with paid internships at 75 private, public and nonprofit employers across the state. This represents a 31% increase in internships and 7% increase in the number of employers from the previous year. Thrive By 25
The Foundation funded a two-generation pilot effort in Chicago to increase employment opportunities for low-income parents, improve their children’s performance in school and support overall family well-being. More than half of enrolled families have met the goals they set for themselves.
The Foundation funded the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute to help secure need-based financial aid and more child care funding for student parents in 2023.
Grantee Georgia Justice Project helped 544 residents get their criminal records expunged, and 110 received early release from probation, improving their odds of securing a job.
Pittsburgh Yards, a development effort led by the Foundation to increase economic and entrepreneurship opportunities in underserved Atlanta neighborhoods, had 89 commercial and residential tenants and 84 users of a coworking space by last fall.
Through the Southern Cities Economic Inclusion initiative, we helped mayors and other local leaders in 16 cities better leverage federal infrastructure funding to increase job opportunities, wealth and wages for low-income individuals and people of color.
Grantee REDF worked with 10 social enterprises in the South and Southwest to create employment opportunities for 1,697 young people of color and system-involved youth. In addition, in 2023, REDF made eight loans to social enterprises supporting more than 8,500 individuals. Thrive By 25
Casey’s Generation Work partners engaged nearly 5,000 young people in 2023, partnering with 1,180 businesses to create employment opportunities. Thrive By 25
Through an impact investment, the Foundation helped Scale Link to not only purchase $23.7 million in microloans — 84% of which were loans to entrepreneurs of color — but also expand its ability to make more such loans, providing these small businesses with critical growth capital.
Early Care, Education and Credentials
Casey invests to make sure children, youth and young adults meet developmental milestones, graduate from high school and obtain postsecondary credentials that will position them for economic success.To achieve this, we promote approaches and policies that help more children and youth prepare for school and work.
A Casey-funded initiative was launched to locate Head Start classrooms on community college campuses to address the chronic shortage of affordable child care for young parents. Thrive By 25
Casey supported the development of a home-visiting program for native families, which is set to expand its reach to 240,000 families in the United States and abroad.
Baltimore’s Promise connected 235 high school graduates through Grads2Careers
to employment opportunities in high-demand fields, while also building the capacity of public workforce and education agencies to better serve them. Thrive By 25
Through its new Career Ready ATL program, grantee United Way of Greater Atlanta enrolled 125 young people in apprenticeships within the construction, plumbing, manufacturing and information technology fields. Thrive By 25
At Austin Community College (through the United Way of Austin, Texas), Miami Dade College and Santa Fe Community College, Expanding Opportunities for Young Families sites made significant progress aiding young parents in college completion. By September, they collectively served 179 parents and 270 children, a 22% increase from 2022. Notably, 80% of parenting students re-enrolled from the previous semester and 22% attained degrees.
Easing the College Journey for Student Parents
Miami Dade College, one of the largest higher education institutions in the United States, is taking innovative steps to support student parents. Through its Mission North Star program, the college is helping young moms and dads, ages 18–29, pursue associate and bachelor's degrees while balancing the responsibilities of parenthood.
The college is one of three participating in the Casey Foundation’s Expanding Opportunities for Young Families, a five-year effort to reduce the challenges faced by student parents, who make up 1 in 4 community college students nationwide. Many have young children younger than age 6 and struggle with basic needs like food and housing. Miami Dade College worked closely with student parent to ensure the program addresses their top priorities.
Mission North Star focuses on promoting parent leadership and connection, eliminating enrollment barriers, and providing tailored support services. It connects students to community partners in workforce development, education, health care and housing. The program also helps those who are not yet enrolled, helping student parents prepare for higher education through high school diploma and ESL programs.
Success coaches for these parents are key to the program's success. They work one-on-one with participants to develop plans that balance school, work and family commitments. They also connect students to resources, such as advising, tutoring, childcare and transportation.
The program has already seen strong results. Akeila Hardy, a nursing student and young mother, credited Mission North Star with helping her secure child care and financial aid to stay enrolled. Khalil Peters, a father of two, said the program's workshops and scholarships were pivotal in allowing him to manage the many demands on his time.
Miami Dade College plans to integrate and expand the Mission North Star model across its eight campuses. By prioritizing the needs of student parents, the college is creating a blueprint for other institutions to better support this population, improve graduation rates and help more young families thrive.
Community and Youth Leadership
The Foundation supports community members and young people to advocate for themselves, promote policies that will help them succeed and play leadership roles in making their communities stronger and safer.
In 2023:
More than 370 young people from across the country applied for the Foundation’s inaugural Rising Leaders for Results Fellowship. After a competitive process, 14 early career professionals ages 24 to 31 earned spots in the 21-month fellowship program
focused on sharpening leadership skills and advancing equitable outcomes. Thrive By 25
In five cities, Casey funded partners to hire and train residents to help prevent community violence and connect neighbors to basic needs. These efforts spurred homicide reductions that exceeded the national average (13%): Atlanta (22%), Baltimore (21%), Baton Rouge (15%), Jackson (20%) and Milwaukee (25%).
The Foundation’s Evidence2Success initiative brings together community leaders to invest in proven programs for kids. Partners collectively served 946 children and families with such programs between July 2022 and June 2023.
With Casey support, 44 leaders from a range of sectors — including the child welfare system, K–12 education, behavioral health and philanthropy — completed the inaugural Certificate Program in Implementation Practice.
The Foundation welcomed 17 new Jim Casey Fellows, young leaders who will work toward improving the lives of teens and young adults connected with the child welfare system. Thrive By 25
Through Casey’s LEAP Youth Fellowship, six young leaders implemented community improvement projects in 2023 and 15 presented to a national gathering of LEAP participants.
During the first half of the year, Casey’s Results Count programs served 172 people, including the Children and Family Fellows, Casey staff and grantees.
The Foundation’s signature leadership development program, the Children and Family Fellowship, marked its 30th anniversary in 2023. With 155 participants in its alumni network, past Fellows today serve as philanthropic leaders, nonprofit executives and respected public officials in human services.
An Entrepreneur Makes Space for Others
In her first year at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Tyeisha Thompson felt a sense of accomplishment. “I really found my voice and started to feel more confident,” says Thompson, who had entered foster care a second time at age 13, following her grandmother’s passing.
Through a state nonprofit, Thompson joined the Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP)™ initiative. Launched by the Casey Foundation and the Corporation for National and Community Service, LEAP aims to boost employment and educational opportunities for young people who have experienced homelessness, foster care or involvement in the criminal justice system.
She soon found herself immersed in the LEAP Youth Fellowship program — a paid one-year leadership opportunity that brought together 10 young people from across the country. Participants attended workshops and other skill-building events, helped peers at local LEAP sites and pursued entrepreneurial passion projects.
Through the fellowship, Thompson was provided the platform to channel her experiences into meaningful action. Encouraged by her mentors and peers, she developed a plan to help children and young adults in foster care transform their living spaces into nurturing, personalized retreats.
With grant funding, she put her plan into motion, partnering with local nonprofits to identify youth in care. Her approach was guided by three main objectives: creating spaces that boost healthy habit, highlight the uniqueness of each child and making change less scary. “Whether you’re in a permanent placement or with a family temporarily, you can benefit from using your space intentionally,” she says.
Today, Thompson has graduated and is working as a specialist with Jenda Family Services, helping prospective foster care providers become licensed with Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services. She hopes to one day scale her passion project — a nonprofit called Creative Spaces Inspire Youth — into a thrift store that allows clients to find items they love.
"The LEAP Fellowship gave me a confidence boost at a time when I needed it most and connected me with opportunities I couldn’t have imagined,” says Thompson. “By helping a young person determine the look and feel of their personal space, I want to empower them the way LEAP empowered me.”
Expanding Knowledge to Improve Child Well-Being
We fund an array of activities to help the Foundation and its partners better understand the problems affecting children, youth and families; build proof of effective interventions; and test new technologies to promote implementation and scale.
The 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book lifted up the nation’s child care crisis, which limits families’ access to affordable, quality child care and hinders full employment for parents. In addition, the publication featured its unique ranking of states on child well-being and highlighted indicators shared in the KIDS COUNT Data Center.
The Foundation’s “Fostering Youth Transitions” brief examined how well teenagers and young adults in foster care are prepared for adulthood. The publication includes data from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Casey released data on youth homelessness and a set of prevention recommendations in a new report.
Grantee Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy completed the second phase of its $5 million initiative to include child and family advocates in the governance of integrated data systems.
To help more communities implement scientifically proven and scalable interventions, the Foundation launched its Evidence2Success tool kit. Also in 2023, the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State University started to release a series of action-oriented briefs resulting from a decade of Evidence2Success evaluations.
Financial Information
The Foundation’s grantmaking and operations are funded by an endowment established by its founder. The board determines the annual budget in December of the prior year based on a formula designed to ensure we have resources sufficient to sustain our work in the future. The value of our assets fluctuate during the year based on the performance of our investments which means our spending rate is not predictable and will vary annually. A listing of the Foundations’ grants are available and updated quarterly on Candid.
Tracking Our Progress
By working with our grantees and partners, Casey hopes to make sure all children and youth have a bright future. We have identified 18 population-level indicators to track progress toward this goal and benchmark how young people and families are doing at the national level. While the Foundation’s KIDS COUNT index is used to measure overall child well-being, these indicators — aligned with each of the five investment areas — track the needs and disparities that our investments target.
As data become available following the pandemic, it’s clear that the country is making progress in some areas but that more work is needed to ensure all children have what they need to thrive.
Here's how each indicator is trending following the pandemic (between 2019 and 2022, unless stated otherwise):
Basic Needs
Babies born with low birth weights Worse
Children, youth and young adults (birth to age 24) who lack health insurance Better
Children, youth and young adults (birth to age 24) who live in a household with a high housing cost burden Worse
Children (birth to age 17) who live in unsafe communities Worse Data from 2021–2022 are not comparable to previous years.
Permanent Relationships
Children, youth and young adults (birth to age 21) involved in the child welfare system Better
Comparing 2019 and 2021
Children (birth to age 17) who live in two-parent families Better
Youth and young adults (ages 15 to 24) involved in the justice system Better
Children in eighth and 10th grade who have an adult other than their parent that they can turn to when they have a problem Worse
Financial Stability
Children, youth and young adults (birth to age 24) who live in low-income families Better
Children (birth to 17) who live with a householder who has at least a high school diploma Better
Children, youth and young adults (birth to age 24) who live in high-poverty communities Better comparing 2016–2020 and 2018–2022
Youth and young adults (ages 16 to 24) who are not in school or working Worse
Early Care, Education and Credentials
Children (ages 3 to 5) enrolled in nursery school, preschool or kindergarten Worse Comparing 2016–2020 and 2018–2022
Fourth graders who are not proficient readers Worse
Youth and young adults (ages 18 to 24) who have graduated from high school Better
Young people (ages 25 to 29) who have an associate degree or higher Better
Community and Youth Leadership
Young people (ages 16 to 24) who got together to do something positive for the community Worse Comparing 2019 and 2021
Adults (ages 25 and older) who got together to do something positive for the community Worse Comparing 2019 and 2021
