Company Profile
ExtraordinaryFamilies
Company Overview
ExtraordinaryFamilies is the winning merger of Southern California Foster Family Agency (SCFFAA) and Child Welfare Initiative (CWI). Our mission is to transform the daily lives of children and families in child welfare with innovative strategies and visionary policy reforms. We recruit, train, and support foster and adoptive parents, equipping them to be nurturing, knowledgeable caregivers, and ensure foster children and youth receive the care and aid they need to thrive, including mental health, medical, and job preparedness/placement services. We also continue to expand the child welfare system’s capacity to provide the necessary assessment, connections, placements, and support that can optimize child and youth outcomes. Integrating the work and expertise of CWI and SCFFAA has resulted in a new agency [ExtraordinaryFamilies] that is an innovative blend of policy and practice, based on identified points of alignment between the organizations’ missions and existing programs. In particular, merging facilitates our child welfare policy reforms backed by our direct services to children and families involved in foster care, and amplifies our impact on the foster care system and local and national leadership in child welfare.
Company History
Throughout its history, Child Welfare Initiative (CWI) focused on expanding foster youths’ access to meaningful employment opportunities that offered both jobs and training, that build their future and bring them closer to self-sufficiency and lifelong security. Concluded in December 2014, CWI’s merger with the Southern California Foster Family & Adoption Agency (SCFFAA) produced the unique opportunity to blend policy work with direct service access with research, to articulate and implement effective practices in foster care, and to expand each organization’s impact. In addition to recruiting foster parents for children, SCFFAA had long focused on improving adult outcomes for older youth in foster care, also in offering employment and job training opportunities. In uniting our organizations, we are now ExtraordinaryFamilies, and are in a position to leverage services, relationships, and a knowledge base which will ultimately inform systems to create change and to optimize positive outcomes for transition age youth.