Every child needs and deserves a permanent family whose support is unconditional. Research shows that the odds of a successful transition to adulthood are severely compromised when young people are cut off from a family environment and left to languish in group care as a result of parental challenges, abuse, neglect, or involvement with the juvenile justice system.

Focusing specifically on efforts to reduce the use of congregate care in the child welfare system, this issue of Casey Connects offers examples of how:

• Casey Family Services, the Foundation’s direct services agency serving, is reducing the time kids spend in foster care and finding permanent homes for more children, including those who are older and have special needs.
  
  
• The Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative is using research on teenage brain development to promote policies and practices that better support older youth in foster care, helping them heal from childhood trauma and move in a positive direction; and
  
  
• Casey’s Child Welfare Strategy Group is helping jurisdictions successfully transition more youth from group care to family settings and to severely limit the use of congregate care for older youth as well as young children.

Children at the Dunbar Learning Complex in Atlanta have shown significant gains in reading proficiency and early childhood development, and more are starting school prepared to learn, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The report, Climbing the Ladder of Reading Proficiency: The First Two Years of Atlanta’s Dunbar Learning Complex, describes the strides the Foundation and community partners have made in one of the city’s most vulnerable communities.

“The learning complex represents the joint commitment of the Casey Foundation, Atlanta Public Schools and Sheltering Arms to support children and families who are living in poverty,” said Gail Hayes, director of the Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site, which has been working to improve conditions in a several southwest Atlanta neighborhoods for a decade. “We’re thrilled it’s already making a difference and setting kids on a path to academic and lifelong success — and this is only the beginning.”

The complex is the only one of its kind in Atlanta and part of the Casey Foundation’s broader effort to transform several city communities by providing high-quality education to children from low-income families while also helping their parents find employment and achieve financial stability.

In one of the largest-ever gatherings of leaders committed to reforming the nation’s juvenile justice system, more than 700 judges, prosecutors, probation managers, community activists and other individuals are kicking off a three-day conference on April 24, in Houston, to prevent the unnecessary incarceration of children.

The 19th Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) inter-site conference at the Westin Galleria builds on a reform movement that began 20 years ago, when the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation launched an effort to find better, safe and community-based options to locking up young people who get into trouble with the law.

Through JDAI, states and communities across the country are developing innovative approaches that prevent the secure confinement of youth and produce improved outcomes for them while keeping communities safe. Currently, 150 JDAI sites operate in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Those numbers are expected to expand to 200 sites in 39 states by the end of 2012.

In 2010, JDAI sites detained 42 percent fewer youth — approximately 2,400 — on an average day than they had prior to implementing approaches that include electronic monitoring, community monitoring, and day or evening reporting centers. The majority of the reduction in detention has been among youth of color. Moreover, sites achieved reductions while improving public safety and saving taxpayer dollars.

Nearly 8 million of America’s children live in high-poverty areas—about 1.6 million more since 2000—according to a new KIDS COUNT Data Snapshot from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Children in the south ands southwest, as well as those of color, are most likely to live in disadvantaged areas.

The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey show that about 7.9 million, or 11 percent, of the nation’s children are growing up in areas where at least 30 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level—about $22,000 per year for a family of four. In 2000, 6.3 million kids, or 9 percent, were living in such communities, which often lack access to resources that are critical to healthy growth and development, including quality education, medical care and safe outdoor spaces.

The new numbers parallel data released in the 2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book, which indicated a significant jump in child poverty over the last decade, as well as an increase in kids living in low-income families.