Targeting low-income, high-risk families the Foundation promotes key services, parenting education, staff development and advocacy for children's healthy development as well as social, emotional, and cognitive well being.

The Foundation's grantmaking is based on the belief that the formative years from prenatal to preschool age are the most important.

The Atlas Family Foundation currently funds 23 agencies: 21 direct service non-profit agencies in Los Angeles County that provide early child development and mental health services for infants, toddlers, and their families in underserved areas; and supports public policy, advocacy, research and education through Zero to Three nationally and Children Now in California.

The Trustees and Executive Director approach philanthropy with an emphasis on relationship building among grantees and other foundations, due diligence, long-term commitments to funding, sensitivity to diverse cultural and ethnic communities, and a willingness to fund organizational infrastructure.

The foundation focuses on 3 major funding areas:

• Early Childhood Development and Infant Mental Health for children prenatal-to-three
• Staff development and education to improve standards of childcare and parenting
• Support for Public Policy initiatives regarding prenatal-to-three children and childcare issues

Lezlie, a Child Development Specialist, and Richard Atlas support the message highlighted in the book, "The Irreducible Needs of Children", by T. Berry Brazelton, MD and Stanley I. Greenspan, MD,: "early childhood is both the most critical and the most vulnerable time in any child's development. Research demonstrates that in the first few years the ingredients for intellectual, emotional, and moral growth are laid down. If they are not, it is true that a developing child can still acquire them, but the price rises and the chances of success decrease with each subsequent year. Failing children in their early years has long term results, all of which are negative."

The Atlas Family Foundation funds programs that operate with a multicultural style of thinking and feeling. It is our belief that people coming together across different cultural backgrounds produce an experience that is transcendent and therefore greater that the sum of its parts.

Click here for a copy of the "Ask The Experts: Helping to Make a Difference—working with infants, toddlers, and their families" article from the July 2008 Zero to Three Journal.