Grants in this category help improve the management, practice and accountability of public systems serving vulnerable children, families, and adults. The Fund 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 in the mental health and child welfare service systems and their interaction with other human service systems, including the criminal justice and education systems. Six principles underlie grantmaking in this category: 1) Grants encourage collaboration among service sectors to learn and work together in the interests of families and individuals. 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 grant-making 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. 6) Grants are intended to help leverage and sustain public support for improving the ways public systems do business. Currently the Foundation is expanding its work addressing the needs of vulnerable children and youth, with innovative projects working with counties and the State of California. These projects focus on family partnerships, the juvenile justice system, and families with incarcerated mothers. Examples of Recent Grants in Improving Human Service Systems: • Children of Incarcerated Mothers: A California Family Impact Seminar, sponsored by the California Research Bureau, California State Library Foundation. This grant supports a series of meetings for state policymakers. Presentations will include the results of research about these children and their mothers, as well as panel discussions including youth and formerly incarcerated mothers. This grant also contributes to additional qualitative research and publishing and disseminating the research findings. • Girls Mental Health Project, Girls Justice Initiative, United Way of Bay Area, San Francisco. This grant supports training to staff in San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Department, and in associated community-based agencies, to better identify girls with mental health service needs, and to improve their interactions with these youth. • The Mental Health Workforce Education Project, the Institute of Mental Illness and Wellness Education at California State University, Hayward. This grant supports a collaboration of a university-based institute, Bay Area county mental health directors, and other public education institutions in the region to identify the current and future educational needs of the public mental health workforce and to create and begin to carry out a plan for addressing those needs. • The CalWORKS/Child Welfare Partnership Project, California Center for Research on Women and Families, Public Health Institute. The Partnership Project is a policy initiative to coordinate services and improve opportunities for families involved in both child welfare and public assistance services. This grant helps counties evaluate their experiments with CalWORKS/Child Welfare service integration. Related publications.