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United for Families, Foster Parent Mentor Program, Children's Services Advisory Committee PROPOSAL NARRATIVE A. ORGANIZATION CAPABILITY (Entire Section A not to exceed one page) 1 . Provide the mission statement and vision of your organization. United for Families ' mission is to help end the cycle of child abuse through a diverse network of community providers and innovative services. We were created in 2003 in response to Community Based Care, a statewide initiative that privatized public child welfare services. We are a non-profit agency charged with developing local services and supports for children and families in Okeechobee and the Treasure Coast. Our commitment to the community is to ensure safety to all children and to provide permanent homes for them. We envision a community where the safety and well-being of children is the concern of every individual; where "Safe Place" is not just a sign on a door, but a creed in every home. We believe that every child deserves a healthy family, and that every weakened family deserves a chance to heal itself. UFF will lead the community in the pursuit of these ideals. 2. Provide a brief summary of your organization including areas of expertise, accomplishments, and population served. UFF is the local umbrella agency in child protective services. We believe that the best way to respond to our community' s unique needs is to bring all local providers of child-abuse services to a single table and to take advantage of existing resources. The services are provided by agencies such as Children' s Home Society and Exchange Club CASTLE, but the design and payment of those services and the children they target are completely the responsibility of UFF. By choosing to provide services through partner agencies, we believe we have fully embraced the true spirit of community based care. For example, UFF recognized the need for greater recruitment efforts to increase the number of licensed foster homes . We developed a program to address that need and, using state and federal grant dollars, hired Hibiscus Children' s Center to provide the service. Our network of providers and the services we entrust to them is comprehensive. Children and families in St. Lucie, Indian River, Martin and Okeechobee counties have access to services that include: Domestic violence and substance abuse prevention, housing assistance, foster care and adoption, family support services, individual and group counseling and behavior management. Since our incorporation in 2003 , we have decreased the length of time children are removed from their homes from 18 months to less than a year. We found more adoptive homes for children than all but one region of the state. Most important, UFF ranked third in the state for keeping children out of the system once they returned home. This indicates that parent-education programs — created to prevent the re-abuse of children — are working. Furthermore, UFF accomplished these tasks with nearly half the funding per child as our sister agencies in South Florida ($8,000 per child locally compared to $ 15,382 per child in Palm Beach County) . 1