News nonprofit to amplify youth voices, cover California foster care reform through grant
LOS ANGELES – Jan. 17, 2017 – PRLog — A $35,000 grant from the Zellerbach Family Foundation will help Fostering Media Connections, a nonprofit news organization, amplify the voices of young people involved in the San Francisco Bay Area’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and also report on California child welfare reform aimed at de-institutionalizing foster care.
Fostering Media Connections (FMC) reports and produces original news content on child welfare and juvenile justice that is published in The Chronicle of Social Change and in other news outlets. Through its Youth Voice initiative, FMC partners with youth advocacy and development organizations and trains youth to produce solution-based journalism – stories that give equal weight to problems and their solutions.
Using the grant from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, FMC will hold four workshops for youth, at least two of which will be held in the Bay Area.
“Zellerbach Family Foundation believes that those most directly impacted by policies should help to inform them, so we are excited to amplify the voices of youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems,” said Amy Price, a program executive for the Zellerbach Family Foundation.
Continuum of Care Reform, scheduled to begin this month, is monumental legislation that will limit the use of group homes for California youth in foster care. FMC will produce at least 12 articles related to the implementation of Continuum of Care Reform. At least half of these articles will highlight Bay Area counties, with a particular focus on the changing roles and responses of the behavioral health and juvenile justice systems.
“Although the Continuum of Care Reform emerged from the child welfare system, it clearly implicates juvenile justice and behavioral health practices, providing a unique opportunity to integrate services that promote well-being for all children and youth in care,” Price said. “FMC plays an important role in highlighting challenges and successes, and holding system leaders accountable, as CCR implementation begins.”
The Zellerbach Family Foundation, based in San Francisco, aims to be a catalyst for constructive social change by initiating and investing in efforts that strengthen families and communities.
Fostering Media Connections is a 501c(3) non-profit that harnesses the power of journalism to advance child welfare reform by covering emerging solutions to the system’s challenges. The Chronicle of Social Change is a national online news site published by Fostering Media Connections that produces daily news about child welfare, juvenile justice and children’s mental health issues.
To view some of the solution-based news stories that FMC produces, visit https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/
Published at Tue, 17 Jan 2017 22:33:03 +0000