Services

Lift the Children utilizes three core strategies - safety, education and advocacy - to protect children from abuse, neglect, and abandonment. We identify and support community based programs that strengthen impoverished families. We help children transition from orphanages into foster families.  We assist older youth as they exit the orphanage system or foster care and integrate into communities and adulthood.  We provide support for higher education. We search for opportunities to integrate “forgotten” children into the social and educational spheres that have excluded them.

Lift the Children’s financial support, training and technical assistance build the capacity of our partners to provide effective child and family services.  We share best practices in child protection and family support with trained social workers, paraprofessionals and health service providers.  We have delivered training and follow-up technical assistance not only at our state-of-the art Child Abuse Prevention Center in North Highlands, California, but also in hospitals, community centers, shelters, and foster care programs in international locations. 

• Family style care for HIV positive children who are orphaned or abandoned
• Community centers to support and strengthen families living in poverty who may be at risk of abandoning or abusing their children
• Long term foster care/group homes reuniting siblings separated by the institutional system
• Integration services for older youth transitioning from foster care or orphanages into independent living
• Therapy and social support for families struggling to keep their special needs children at home and out of institutions
• Professional training, development and technical support in child protection best practices 

 

Safety

Lift the Children programs protect vulnerable children in Romania, Guatemala and former Soviet nations, where children are exposed to many of the same risks as those faced by U.S. children. However, differences in the availability of healthcare and education services, in social support, and in political and economic stability may foster particularly dangerous conditions for children. There are few safety nets. For example, Guatemala’s nascent child protection system does not yet have the capacity to protect children from child labor or hunger or violence in their own homes and communities. In Romania, youth continue to exit orphanages with few life skills, no resources and no families to call upon. Infants may be left for weeks and months in hospitals, abandoned by parents unable to care for them. Without assistance, all of these children are at high risk of violence, human trafficking, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, homelessness and exploitation.

Prevention services for children and families

• Home visitation
  
• Child care
  
• Parent support groups
  
• Medical and dental care
  
• Vitamins, immunizations
  
• HIV anti-retroviral drug treatment
  
• Emergency food and clothing
  
• Family activities
  
• Parenting classes
  
• Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention
  
• Job search
  
• Maternal and child health support, including breastfeeding
  
• Family violence prevention
  
• Drug and alcohol referral services
  
• Care of infants and toddlers abandoned in hospitals

Support for foster youth and children exiting orphanages

• Foster families for children without parental care
  
• Housing
  
• Education, tutoring
  
• Medical and dental care
  
• HIV/AIDS medical support and education
  
• Life Skills education
  
• Vocational training
  
• Education in human trafficking
  
• Job search strategies
  
• Counseling, mentoring
  
• Support groups and organized social activities

Community Development and Engagement

• Community center/child care
  
• Parent advisory groups
  
• Training of community mothers
  
• Online parenting education
  
• Weekly parenting radio spots/ newspaper columns
  
• Community-sponsored Special Olympics
  
• Education and training of community physicians/social workers to recognize and respond to child maltreatment
  
• Training in community engagement

 

Education

Lift the Children offers education and training to professionals and paraprofessionals, including our program partners, who wish to enhance their ability to engage parents, improve parenting skills, and strengthen parents’ ability to access community services. Our partners, in turn, provide education and training to community members and to the parents and children who access their services. All professional education and training is customized and adapted to respect and incorporate local values and traditions.

Professional Education

• Parent Child Interaction
  
• Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention
  
• Father Involvement
  
• Preventing Family Violence; effects of violence on brain development
  
• Child Development
  
• Prenatal Bonding and Stimulation
  
• Infant Attachment
  
• Infant Temperament
  
• Families Facing Challenges
  
• Family Support Strategies
  
• Strengthening Multi-ethnic Families and Communities: A violence prevention parent training program
  
• Family Resource Center model

Parent Education

• Parenting workshops (discipline, parenting without violence, effects of violence on infant brain development, long-term effects of violence on children, health, nutrition)
  
• Prevention of Shaken Baby Syndrome/strategies to help parents cope with inconsolable infant crying
  
• Accessing Community Services
  
• Job Search strategies
  
• Child Rights
  
• Children with special needs

Child and Youth Education

• Continuing education
  
• Vocational education
  
• Life Skills
  
• Higher education for orphanage graduates
  
• Early Literacy program for pre-school children
  
• Tutoring, mentoring
  
• HIV/AIDS education
  
• Public education for children with special needs

 

Advocacy

Lift the Children and its international partners advocate for protection of the rights of vulnerable children and youth who are at risk of abuse, abandonment, and institutionalization. Our advocacy protects children against violence, supports alternatives to institutionalization, and lobbies to strengthen and protect families that are marginalized by poverty or ethnicity. Our partner programs in Romania have been replicated nationally. Our colleagues from former Soviet republics have campaigned to raise awareness of domestic violence in their region. Guatemalan government officials have visited successful community-based family strengthening programs in the Sacramento area. By sharing models and best practices in child welfare and family strengthening, Lift the Children and its partners have influenced government officials to develop and implement policies that protect children.

Policy

• Advocate with partners for deinstitutionalization of Romanian children
  
• Assist international partners in developing child abuse reporting policy
  
• Recommended policy change in the treatment of abandoned children in Romanian hospitals
  
• Recommended policies supporting development of family strengthening services in Guatemala
• Implementation of Shaken Baby Syndrome Primary Prevention program in 12 Romanian hospitals underway

Capacity Building

• Trained physicians, caregivers, social workers in identification of and response to child maltreatment
  
• Trained physicians, caregivers, social workers in warm, responsive care of infants and toddlers
  
• Hosted government and UNICEF officials from Guatemala in 3 days of intensive site visits and study of interagency collaboration promoting Family Strengthening Services
  
• Hosted professionals and government officials from Ukraine for 3 weeks of intensive site visits and study of interagency collaboration and services promoting Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention.
  
• Hosted professionals and government officials from Russia for 3 weeks of intensive study site visits and of interagency collaboration and services promoting Community Based Assistance for Vulnerable Children
  
• Will host professionals and government officials from Russia for 3 weeks of intensive study site visits and of interagency collaboration and services promoting Maternal and Child Health

Political Activity and Outreach

As an agency of the Child Abuse Prevention Center in North Highlands, California, Lift the Children is involved in legislative advocacy in Sacramento.

Lift the Children keeps its international partners aware of state and national legislative measures that may be informative as a basis for recommending policy changes in their own countries. We make available to our partners statistics and data from U.S., UNICEF, and World Health Organization publications related to violence against children, child safety, and maternal and child health. We provide written materials and curricula that can be adapted and utilized by our partners in their programs and educational materials. Much of the information we have provided, including material from our training workshops, is subsequently used in our partners’ educational outreach materials.