The Texas Center for Child and Family Studies (the Center) is joining with the nationally recognized Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) to provide coaching and technical assistance to four Houston-area organizations that provide residential care.
Through a generous grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the following organizations will be part of the Center’s newly formed Quality Improvement Collaborative:
- Hearts With Hope Foundation, a residential operation focused on a trauma -informed approach to growing and healing families
- DePelchin Children’s Center, a statewide community organization offering a range of adoptive, foster and residential services
- Kinder Emergency Shelter, a 24-hour Harris County program that provides emergency child-care services to youth from the ages of 12-17
- Arrow’s Freedom Place, a residential treatment shelter with programs curated to serve victims of commercial sexual exploitation
The Center is a supporting organization of the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services. BBI is a national initiative identifying and advancing best practice and policy for youth and families receiving residential interventions. BBI’s goals are to reduce readmissions to residential settings, strengthen youth and family engagement in treatment planning, and sustain long-term positive life outcomes.
The coaching and technical assistance provided to organizations in the cohort will include a focus on family engagement to help strengthen partnerships with the families of the youth served. This will entail a series of three webinars, with three alternating individualized monthly coaching calls with BBI experts.
To learn more about the Center’s ongoing partnership with BBI, visit the latest projects page of our website and stay tuned for more information on BBI in the months ahead.