Causes: Adoption, Children & Youth, Family Counseling, Foster Care

Mission: To transform the lives of children in foster care by building and nurturing permanent families. We meet this mission by serving children living-in or at-risk entering foster care and families wanting to provide permanency in twelve northern california counties.

Programs: Permanency placement: the agency's primary goal is to encourage and facilitate a permanent home and family for children and youth living in foster care, with emphasis on reunification or adoption. The agency specializes in those children and youth who are considered hard to place. The agency recruits families, trains and assesses, conducts home studies, and provides placement and support services to children/youth and the families. Sources of revenue include placement fees and reimbursement from the state of california through the private adoption agency reimbursement program (paarp) and contributions. Placer kids is a collaboration between the agency and placer county children's system of care. The goal of the collaboration is to reduce the time between initial placement and finalization of adoption and to increase the number of placer county foster children who are adopted. Placer kids is funded through reimbursement by placer county and contributions to the agency.

destination family: the focus of destination family is that no youth emancipates from foster care without the love, safety and unconditional commitment of a family. The program is intended for children and youth with delayed permanence. Delayed permanence is defined as having lived in foster care for more than two years without an active plan for legal permanence. This service operates in three counties - sacramento, placer and nevada counties. This program is funded through a variety county contracts, a grant from the dave thomas foundation and contributions. Children served by sierra forever families had the following outcomes: 196 finalizations 172 other children in placements 89 experienced a mentor/mentee match 154 participated in destination family 76 in family preservation 62 in permanency support services. Some children are served by multiple programs.

therapeutic support services: the agency provides outpatient and community based permanency, competent mental health services to pre and post adoption, guardianship children and their families. The professional staff has consistently helped families to maintain and enhance the attachment and permanency for each child. The agency utilizes best practices such as parent child interaction therapy, dyadic developmental therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Sources of revenue include an early periodic screening diagnosis and treatment (epsdt) contract from nevada county and placer counties. The program also relies on contributions.