Grants in this category help improve the management, practice, and accountability of public systems serving vulnerable children and families. The Foundation seeks opportunities to promote thoughtful policy work, practical applications of policy changes, and documentation and dissemination of results.

The primary focus of these grants is on the public mental health and child welfare service systems and their interaction with other human service systems, including the criminal and juvenile justice systems.

Six principles underlie grantmaking in this category:

1) Grants encourage collaboration among service sectors to learn and work together in the interests of children and families.

2) Grants focus on early intervention and promoting the strengths and assets of people at risk of becoming deeply involved with public systems.

3) Grants encourage consumers and families to get involved in policy work, governance, service delivery, and evaluation. This participation promotes grantmaking that is responsive to diverse populations.

4) Grants add value to the work by advancing the field through learning what works and sharing that knowledge with others.

5) Grants are informed by experts in the policy arena, in public systems, and in academia, and are grounded in real life knowledge and experience.

6) Grants are intended to help leverage and sustain public support for improving the ways public systems do business.


Examples of Recent Grants in Improving Human Service Systems:

• Jail Contact Visiting Project, Community Works West
This project is a collaboration with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to increase and enhance contact visits between children and their parents incarcerated in the San Francisco jails.

• Mental Health Juvenile Justice Curriculum Project, United Advocates for Children and Families
This project resulted in a training curriculum, aimed at family members and youth with mental health needs who are involved in the juvenile justice system, to help them navigate the juvenile justice system, with special attention to getting mental health needs addressed, help them work effectively with other child serving agencies, and also help these families educate local and state policy-makers about needed system and program improvements

• Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project, Bay Area Academy, San Francisco State University
This grant added a mental health and wellness component to support the current and former foster youth in this project who train child welfare workers and others to work more effectively with foster children.

• Greater Bay Area Mental Health Workforce Collaborative, California Institute for Mental Health
This grant supports a collaborative effort to improve coordination between public agencies and the institutions that educate their future employees, and encourages students and consumers to consider public sector mental health careers.

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