ABOUT child welfare our work

The R+D Lab for Child Welfare.

Trust, transparency, & good stewardship.

TEAMCEOBoardfunders

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Join us in the work.

How you can change child welfare with Think of Us.

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Trust, transparency, & good stewardship.

Center for Lived Experience

Integrating the insights, data, and leadership of people
with lived experience in foster care.

Project Overviews

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Envisioning a world that offers every person the conditions they need to

heal, develop, and thrive.

Our foster care system is failing youth & families

Introducing

Nominate a Champion of Lived Experience

We are a research & design lab for foster care, driving equitable systems change so that the youth and families most impacted by foster care have the greatest power and opportunity to reshape it.

400,000+

youth in foster care in a given year -
in 2020, 425,000 youth

873,987

youth ages 14-26 who have spent at
least one day in the child welfare system

Source pending

4.4 million

referrals for child abuse and neglect for
‍7.9 million children

20,000+

age out each year

$7.6 billion

cost to society per annual cohort
of youth aging out of foster care

Last year was our most impactful yet.

A deeper dive into the how and why of our work

Impact

January 14, 2022

Care Not Cages: Invest in Families and Communities

Bobbi Taylor

The Problem of Institutionalizing Youth is Bigger than Foster Care

Impact

January 14, 2022

We Did the Impossible: the Check for Us Initiative

Natalie Bergstrasser

How Think of Us demonstrated a new approach to streamlining government support.

News

November 23, 2021

COVID Relief for Thousands of Foster Youth Has Expired. Will Lawmakers Renew It?

Natalie Bergstrasser

The continuing conversation around how to support foster youth through the pandemic.

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