PARENT ADVOCATES
The Parent Advocate Initiative (PAI) is a collaboration of six foundations, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, and the Child Welfare Organizing Project. We are promoting the hiring of Parent Advocates by foster care agencies. Parent Advocates in the child welfare system are parents who have had their children removed to foster care and have successfully reunified with them, and who subsequently choose to be trained and to work within the child welfare system. They humanize the child welfare system by giving voice to parents’ experiences and incorporating their own experiences into practice.

To view the updated PAI Concept Paper (as of 12/16/08), please click here.

1. CLICK HERE to listen to the Introduction and Keynote Address by David Tobis, Executive Director of the Child Welfare Fund, to the Gathering of Grassroots Family Advocacy Organizations Conference on September 19, 2008

2. "Take Our Poverty, Not Our Children” -- A Summary of the Gathering of Grassroots Family Advocacy Organizations Conference
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, November 2008

3. Parent Advocate Video

4. Parent Advocate Stories

5. Parent Advocate Posters