FosterEd leads highly collaborative projects between Los Angeles County school districts, the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (LADCFS) to better support the educational needs of foster youth students. Los Angeles County, home to the largest foster youth population in the nation, has a robust network of public and nonprofit agencies whose leadership and practitioners are deeply committed to improving the wellbeing of children and families involved in the child welfare system. By developing key partnerships with leaders from LADCFS and LACOE’s Foster Youth Services Coordinating Program (FYSCP), FosterEd Los Angeles has been working with these agencies in regional collaboratives to provide in-depth technical assistance to school districts in their Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) development and implementation for foster youth.

FosterEd Los Angeles’s key school district partners include the Los Angeles Unified School District, Palmdale School District, Centinela Valley Union High School District, Eastside Union School District, and Westside Union School District. FosterEd Los Angeles has supported these districts’ LCAP efforts to implement:

• District policies that align with foster youth education laws and rights;
• Effective practices and programs to improve foster youth education outcomes, including dedicated counseling and social work staff, trauma-informed school settings, and data sharing and analysis around foster youth education; and
• Capacity building at the district- and school-site levels to better serve system involved youth.

FosterEd Los Angeles has also worked closely with LACOE’s FYSCP and DCFS to build the capacity of social workers in DCFS’s regional offices to better meet the educational needs of foster youth students in collaborative and coordinated ways with their local educational agency partners. FosterEd partners closely with other local child welfare and education advocacy organizations, as well as county entities like the Office of Child Protection and Education Coordinating Council, to work at a systems level to sustain effective programs and policies that improve the education outcomes of system involved youth.

FosterEd is currently in the process of establishing a multi-agency pilot, using the FosterEd framework and focused on college and career success, for foster and probation youth in Los Angeles County.