Los Angeles County Family Services & Youth Mentoring

Nadya Scott, Board Member

When we’re young, we all need an adult in our lives who cares about us, gives us hope and guides us into maturity. It can be a parent, a mentor, a teacher, or a volunteer. Too often, foster children are left to fend for themselves, without this support and guidance.

About the Initiative

We give hope to foster children that they can succeed throughout their lives – hope that helps them overcome challenges in childhood and motivates them to succeed.

The Goal

We envision a broad network of mentoring and adult support for foster youth. With this support, we seek to prevent foster youth from becoming delinquent from school, homeless, or involved with the juvenile justice system. At Reissa, we believe adult mentorship also can help prevent drug abuse and teen pregnancy. For foster youth to benefit from this support, the broader culture must change its view of them. We seek to erase the stigma of foster care, and ensure that from the moment a child enters the foster system, they are surrounded by stable, loving, trained adults.

Focus Areas

We fund a variety of interventions for foster children and youth:

Mentoring programs to help foster youth graduate high school and succeed after graduation.
Education programs to make foster kids aware of scholarships, and give them the hope and confidence to go to college.
Transportation and home support services to improve the lives of foster kids. Such services make more opportunities available to them and allow them to remain in the school of their choice.