Current Grantees Early Childhood Collaboratives

THE WESTSIDE INFANT FAMILY NETWORK

What is The Westside Infant Family Network?
The Westside Infant Family Network (WIN) is a collaboration among six agencies serving poverty level populations in Service Planning Area (SPA) 5, to improve outcomes for children 0-3 in "at risk" families by addressing the mental health needs of their primary caregiver and helping develop a stable environment and a responsive approach to parenting.

The collaboration is designed to meet the shared need between all participating agencies for increased access to culturally competent mental health services for their predominantly Latino Immigrant clients. At the same time, these efforts will increase the capacity of non-clinical staff in all the agencies (case managers, childcare teachers, parent educators etc.) to both identify and address clinical issues that they are currently unable to deal with.

Some of the most prevalent concerns that are insufficiently addressed for these agencies' clients are post-partum depression, traumatic stress disorder and mood disorders amongst parents that threaten the development of healthy attachment and in some cases the safety of young children.

Who is Involved?
Participating agencies include St. Joseph Center, the Venice Family Clinic, the Westside Children's Center, the Mar Vista Family Center, the Westside Family Health Center, and the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District Infant Family Support Program, who collectively serve thousands of low income families with the provision of healthcare, childcare, family support services, parenting support and education, and foster care/adoption placement.

Zero to Three, a resource center on the healthy development of the nation's youngest children serves as a topical advisor, and Dr. Christoph Heinicke of the UCLA Family Development Project serves as a consultant to the collaborative.

The Atlas Family Foundation has supported the development of this collaborative to date.

Who will it serve?
These agencies serve predominantly immigrant Latino families, with limited access to culturally competent services. Though the primary focus of the work will be on secure attachment and other strong predictors of outcomes for children 0-3, the needs of the whole family will be addressed.

What is the approach?
All participants in this collaborative take a Family Systems approach to their work. This means that the assets of the families are built upon and strengthened to create the greatest level of stability and support for both children and their caretakers as possible.

Building upon the trusting relationships already established with these families, agencies will serve as a bridge for families who as a result of their beliefs or fears, might not otherwise make use of services even if they were available.

What will this collaborative provide?
This collaborative will increase direct service to approximately 200 of the hardest to serve families while improving the capacity of both individual agencies and the neighborhood level system they collectively form to respond to clinical needs of their whole client population. The collaborative has three core components:

• Improved Capacity of Agency Staff to Identify and Address Clinical Issues: Through training and case consultation with clinical staff, non-clinical "lay" staff in these organizations will improve their ability to identify and respond to clinical issues.
• Improved Access to Clinical Resources: To maximize the use of scarce resources, the collaborating agencies will share a team made up of a, a clinical coordinator, two consulting psychiatrists, and a pool of bilingual therapists. In consultation with the lead contact from each agency, the clinical coordinator will deploy clinicians to consult on particular cases, provide assessments, medications or therapy as indicated.
• Improved Neighborhood Level Systems: The collaborative structure will provide a formal mechanism for ongoing contact between key staff within each agency, which will facilitate improvements in referral and resource sharing. Additionally, this structure will enable the development of a shared approach by all levels of staff at each agency, and by extension, a greater continuity of services.

What outcomes do we expect to see?

• Improved Secure Attachment for approximately 200 of the most at risk infants and toddlers during the first three years of implementation
• Increased capacity of the parents of these children to be responsive caretakers
• Increased capacity of agency staff to identify and integrate clinical issues into their case management work, and primary relationships with parents and families
• Increased referrals by agency staff, to resources available to meet the material needs of their clients
• Enhanced coordination, communication and continuity of approach among participating agencies

External evaluators will be engaged in the final planning stages and implementation of this effort to help measure the outcomes articulated above, while seeking to understand the cumulative implications of this work for the neighborhoods these agencies collectively serve, and in particular the impact of this effort on increasing access to and usage of mental health services for the Latino immigrant population.

How will this work be sustained after the three-year pilot is completed?
We are hopeful that by providing a model of how scarce culturally competent mental health and family support resources can be shared, we will be able to both advocate for changes and benefit from the reform efforts already underway in many of the systems that support and serve these families.

L.A PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FOR INVESTING IN INFANTS & TODDLERS

It is widely recognized that the early years of a child's life are a critical period for growth. To this end, the foundation set during this time directly affects the development of social, emotional and physical skills and influences one's ability to engage, contribute to, and survive in society. Furthermore, all children, and the parents/caregivers who raise them, must have equal access to and benefit from the types of environments and resources which will foster optimal development.

Richard & Lezlie Atlas, Founding Trustees and Janis Minton, Executive Director, of The Atlas Family Foundation, have long shared the belief that the early years are decisively formative and that proactive intervention programs have proved increasingly successful. However, it was during Richard's own journey to learn more about investing in early childhood that he discovered the public and private agencies in Los Angeles County were communicating with each other in a limited and sporadic way. Richard felt strongly that collaborative communication would in turn lead to more powerful investments in the children of LA County. In Janis & Richard's vision, The Los Angeles Public/Private Funders Partnership for Infants and Toddlers was formed and he invited members to meet based on their own interest, goodwill and with a joint commitment to:

• Learn about, support and promote the importance of the prenatal to five years for the health and well-being of children and their families.
• Promote the alignment and coordination of resources to advance best practices and innovations in the field.
• Support and encourage meaningful collaboration that respects diversity, exhibits compassion and values honesty.

Grounded in Richard's and Janis' vision and the emerging operational structure, this is the first time that the greatest influencers of Los Angeles County in the Prenatal to Five funding field have joined forces to create change on multiple levels. Through the joint efforts and collective will of Los Angeles County's public and private leaders, our youngest children will thrive in a healthy, safe and nurturing environment.

The group came together to create impactful collaboration and we believe that our ability to both educate and co-invest will have far-reaching and long-term impact on the youngest children in our community to the ultimate benefit of our community at-large.

Founded in 2003, The Los Angeles Public/Private Funders Partnership for Infants and Toddlers is a philanthropic funding collaborative comprised of some of the country's largest private foundations, impactful family foundations and public funders of early childhood development.

The mission of The Los Angeles Public/Private Funders Partnership for Infants and Toddlers is to invest in and promote innovations that advance the lifelong health and well-being of children age prenatal to five.

Membership in the Partnership is open to public, private and individual funders who have the resources, intention and interest in leveraged grantmaking in early childhood.