About Us

The Powerful Families, Powerful Communities NJ team combines sophisticated design capabilities, deep domain expertise, and diverse local partners, all working directly with visionary and inspired government officials. We’ve come together with the goal of developing a more equitable and supportive child welfare system that shares power with the community and spurs disruptive innovation. The strategy team is made up of national and local leaders with the reputations, relationships, and authority needed to remove barriers, shift power to families and effect lasting change.

Our goals are for every child to grow up safely with their family, for families and communities to share and hold power to design their own futures, and to support families in ways that positively impact their trajectory in life.

We also believe that child welfare must be explicitly anti-racist, and that our child and family well-being system must be designed around the need to eliminate racial disparity. There is clear evidence that the current system creates disproportionately negative outcomes for Black and Indigenous families and families of color. BIPOC children are removed from their families at higher rates, stay in out-of-home care longer, and have lower rates of reunification with their families.

The systemic racism within child welfare systems throughout the country is as prevalent today as when the systems were conceived. The persistent racial disparities need to be identified, addressed and resolved. Even in New Jersey, where there has been a significant reduction in the number of children in out of home care, there is still great disparity and disproportionality for children of color.