Our Mission
Improve the lives of children by providing strengths-based foster care, adoption, and mental health services that promote the permanency, safety, and well-being of youth.
Our Vision
Focus on Youth is the chosen provider of quality foster care, adoption, and mental health services to children, families, and helping professionals.
Our Trauma-Informed Care Vision
Focus on Youth is a trauma-informed care provider known for empowering our community to embrace resilience and hope, knowing that healing is possible.
Transforming Lives for Over 30 Years
Passionate Beginnings
Founded on February 5, 1992, by Cindy Skinner, Focus on Youth began with a vision to improve the lives of children. She believed children would fare far better if foster parents were trained to work with the unique needs of youth in care and educated to remain committed to the placement. With permanency a primary goal, our services quickly expanded beyond foster care to behavioral health services and then adoption services in 1996. In 2013, we became a certified community mental health center, which allowed us to offer behavioral health services to all families in the community.
Passing on the Legacy
In 2015, after 23 years of leadership, Cindy passed the baton to Bryan Forney. Bryan served as Executive Director until 2021, navigating the agency into new partnerships and opportunities that reached even more hurting children. In August 2021, Alicia Ajiboye was chosen as the next CEO of Focus on Youth. She brings a wealth of experience to the role. Alicia served as a Youth Specialist, Supervisor, and Training Manager at Focus on Youth from 2007-2019. Alicia also has experience as a medical social worker and instructing students at Miami University (Oxford). Alicia is honored to lead a team so devoted to supporting vulnerable youth and families.
A Future of Hope
Focus on Youth has worked with thousands of youth and families and is ready to help thousands more. Our philosophy is simple: we believe no trauma is too big to overcome, kids grow best in families, kids in care need foster families who won’t give up on them, and parents are key players in the success of all youth. That is why we provide strong support, professional training, and effective treatment interventions for the foster and biological parents of the children we serve.
Impact
Focus on Youth is committed to continuously improving our services to provide the highest quality programs to children, individuals, families, and the community. Outcomes are collected and analyzed on a constructive, planned, systematic, and continuous basis to determine the appropriateness and quality of the services delivered and promote a high learning, high performance oriented organization. You can see the impact of our work by visiting our website to view our Annual Reports for the past 5 years, detailing the specific ways in which Focus on Youth has worked to maintain our mission and vision to serve children and families in our community.