Our Approach
THE CHALLENGE
In DC, there are nearly 600 children in foster care and over 1,200 at-risk of entering foster care.
Every child deserves safety, stability, and love—and every family has the potential to provide it when surrounded by the right support. DC127 works to strengthen families, build community connections, and ensure that children are cared for in stable, loving homes. By coming alongside parents and caregivers, we help break cycles of isolation and create pathways toward healing and lasting stability.
OUR APPROACH
DC127 meets families where they are, offering wraparound support to those at-risk of entering foster care and providing time and resources to foster and kinship families who are caring for children in their homes.
Our holistic programs focus on both prevention and care, walking alongside families through every stage. By honoring parents and caregivers as experts of their own journeys, we shape a trauma-informed, strengths-based approach guided by their perspectives and needs.
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There are common risk factors that, if unresolved, could result in children being removed from their home. By addressing the levels of risk, we strengthen and stabilize families before there is a disruption that leads to children experiencing foster care.
We preserve families to ensure that children have a safe and healthy home by mobilizing churches and recruiting volunteer teams to build a support system.
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Although our hope is that every child remains with their family, we also recruit foster families to ensure that children who are in foster care have a safe home to live in.
In partnership with the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA), we host bimonthly Foster Care Info Sessions that provide an overview of the requirements and process for becoming a licensed foster home in Washington, DC.
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If a child cannot safely remain in the care of their parents, we walk alongside kinship caregivers and foster families to connect them to community resources, volunteers, and a support network to limit the amount of child placement disruptions.
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As a child transitions back home, we work to support their biological family as well as their foster family with ongoing resources and volunteer support.