A Change in Focus
or nearly a decade, the Foundation has devoted a major portion of its Grantmaking work to promoting the emotional and behavioral health of preteens, ages 9 to 13. Over that time, the Foundation has invested $18 million in grants, funding 62 individual agencies that have served approximately 64,000 preteens.
Since the inception of its Grantmaking program, the Foundation periodically has reassessed its priority areas, to ensure that it is making the most strategic use of funds.
To this end, the Foundation undertook a strategic planning process, resulting in a Board decision in 2008 to exit the preteen area over the next few years and change its focus to another critical area–children with special health care needs.
The decision to focus on children with special health care needs is based in part on the fact that children living with chronic diseases utilize the majority of the health care resources used by children. While this group of children receives excellent care when they are acutely ill in a children’s hospital, the system of care in their homes and communities is much less robust. The Board believes that the Foundation must play a role in ensuring a better and more complete continuum of care for these vulnerable children.
Also, one of the Foundation’s primary roles is to fundraise for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and child health programs at the Stanford University School of Medicine. This new focus also will bring Foundation investments into closer alignment with the work of its partners, and will promote leveraging of increasingly limited resources.
The Board also took into consideration that the majority of the Foundation’s preteen grants have supported after-school programs. In recent years, more funding has become available for such programs, particularly with the implementation of Proposition 49. Funds from the Foundation and others also have strengthened the after-school field over the last decade, with more research available on what works, increased efforts in professional development, and stronger networks and collaborations, among many other advancements.
The Foundation will leave the preteen area gradually, and will leave a strong legacy. Much of the recent grant funding has focused on systemic changes that will improve programs for preteens on an ongoing basis. Preteen grants continue through 2011.
During 2008, the Foundation made 16 grants totaling almost $2.7 million to community partners in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties that worked to advance preteen emotional and behavioral development.
Two grants support substantial new projects designed to change how schools think about the emotional health of students. A grant to the New Teacher Center underwrites an innovative teacher training program that will ultimately reach more than 150 school districts in the state, training teachers to promote emotional resiliency of their students. A grant to WestEd supports a pilot program that would enable schools across the state to examine the results of their students’ California Healthy Kids Survey, in conjunction with students, to build processes and modify school and community practices so that they support youth emotional and behavioral health. Both projects have evaluation components and will develop curricula to ensure replicability. Additionally, both programs are linked to statewide educational networks, which will increase the possibility of sustainability, once the pilots are completed.
Support for Project Cornerstone is another grant to improve school climate for youth. An existing program will be expanded to 26 middle and elementary schools and involve teachers, parents and students in implementing strategies to decrease bullying and create safe, caring environments that value and promote all students’ well-being and encourage all students to achieve.
The Foundation also awarded 11 special grants totaling $241,000 in 2008.
For more information about the grantmaking program, see www.lpfch.org/grantmaking/.