Extraordinary Families

All children deserve a safe and loving home where they can flourish. Extraordinary Families (ExtraFam) aims to give children and youth in foster care the stable, caring homes and support they need to achieve their hopes, fulfill their dreams, and thrive.

ExtraFam provides comprehensive, trauma-informed services while implementing innovative strategies to build best practices and drive systemic improvement among partners and the field.
Of the 16,000 children currently in foster care in Los Angeles County, most (88%) entered care due to neglect or abuse. Traumatic events often have lasting, adverse effects on health, well-being, education, and employment. As a result of entering foster care, attachment patterns that a child naturally seeks to form with caregivers are interrupted (often frequently,), complicating brain development. These children require intensive intervention and support to develop on a comparable timeline with children who grew up in a nurturing environment.

ExtraFam works on the micro and macro levels to improve immediate and long-term outcomes through:

1. Foster Care. Extraordinary Families recruits and trains resource (foster) parents to care for children entering the foster care system. Children remain in care until they can safely reunify with their family or relatives. If the courts determine that a child cannot return safely to their family, the case plan shifts from family reunification to adoption in most instances.

2. Unlimited Possibilities for Youth (UP4Youth). ExtraFam supports young adults who are in the process of (or recently completed) emancipating from the foster care system. UP4Youth Program Specialists support youth as they navigate the critical shift to self-sufficiency without the familial resources (whether social, emotional, or financial) that many of their peers enjoy.

3. Advocacy & Public Policy. Working at the systems level, ExtraFam combines best practices with evidence-based research to advocate for critical policy reform, programs, and services that are transformational, scalable, and produce measurable improvements in the lives of children.

ExtraFam recognizes that a significant cause of the challenges faced by current and former foster youth is the lack of stability and positive relationships that system involvement can cause. To that end, the most crucial goal of Extraordinary Families' work is creating safe, permanent connections. ExtraFam is proud to share that 98% of children served by the organization experience only one foster home while under ExtraFam's care, compared to the 30% of youth who experienced three or more placements in California in 2021, which rises to 53% for children in care over two years.

Testimonials

"I cannot say enough great things about Extraordinary Families! Trying to navigate Foster Care by myself was daunting. From the second I connected with this organization I felt supported every step of the way. Because of them my dream of becoming a mother is now a reality. I am forever grateful!!!" - Jami

"Extraordinary Families is a wonderful organization aligning foster children with caring families. They go beyond just training potential parents for foster care and adoption, they take the time to really get to know the parents and the children. This allows them to keep the priority of the child's best interest as their focus. They matched my family with twin girls and we felt like we had someone holding our hand through the entire process. Their staff of social workers are kind, professional and well informed. They understand the system and are interested in making foster care a more just and accountable world for children." - Tiffany