Child Welfare & Family Well-Being: Families with Young Children: Ages 0-5

Families with young children often face issues that bring them into contact with the County’s crisis systems. As of February 2025, adult women represented 19% of the total number of eligible persons on CalWORKs, and children aged 5 and younger represented approximately 23% of those eligible. Given these numbers and the importance of the first five years of life in establishing a healthy foundation for lifelong development, this population warrants increased focus for developing strategies that promote well-being and mitigate adverse outcomes, such as interactions with crisis systems. 

There is an intense desire and significant momentum among both County and non-County stakeholders to establish a true child welfare and family well-being system in Los Angeles County, with particular focus on reaching children as early as possible to improve outcomes across their life course. 

The Prevention and Promotion efforts will align and leverage existing Countywide initiatives and infrastructure to maximize resources. They seek to prevent family involvement with crisis systems while increasing access to economic and concrete supports. Efforts also include improving mandated reporter decision-making and strengthening policy advocacy. 

Behavioral Health: Youth and Young Adults: Ages 11-26

The PPSGC’s focal population-level outcomes in the Behavioral Health Domain are decreasing suspension rates among 11 - 19-year-olds and reducing youth disconnection rates. Youth disconnection, defined as youth between the ages of 16 - 26 who are not in school/training or working/seeking employment, is associated with a host of negative outcomes across the Life Course. These youth are more likely to: 

• Be a part of a generational poverty cycle; 
• Be unemployed/underemployed; 
• Have justice system involvement; 
• Have behavioral health issues; and 
• Experience poor health and early mortality

Societal factors shape individual-level factors contributing to youth disconnection and include child welfare and juvenile justice system involvement, unresolved trauma, homelessness, and a fractured sense of connection and belongingness. Societal and systems-level contributing factors include structural racism, disconnection from opportunity broadly, inadequate support within the education system, particularly at vulnerable transition points between middle school and high school, and after graduation, and inadequate career pathways to living wage employment. 

The Prevention and Promotion efforts seek to align and leverage existing Countywide efforts, infrastructure, and relationships. They will develop and bolster the availability of and access to services, resources, and opportunities. Efforts also include increasing departmental staff knowledge and understanding of positive youth development, the emerging adulthood life stage, and effective practices for promoting thriving and well-being among this population. Countywide efforts impact will be measured to inform pivots from those not yielding desired results, and the scaling up of effective approaches. 

Homelessness & Housing: County Systems-Impacted Transitional Aged Youth: Ages 18-26

A PPSGC area of focus in the Homelessness and Housing Domain is promoting housing stability among systems-impacted TAY. Significant homelessness among systems-impacted TAY persists, with homelessness among justice-impacted young people being most prevalent. 

Preventing homelessness among former systems-impacted youth requires upstream strategies that reduce entries into foster care and the justice system; midstream strategies that reduce the time spent in systems, including enhancing targeted efforts to facilitate permanency for transitional age youth; and strategies that are more proximate to the issue, such as strengthening transition planning and support for youth who will age out of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems between the ages of 18-21, and building infrastructure to support systems-impacted young adults, over age 21, after they have exited. 

The Prevention and Promotion efforts seek to align and leverage existing Countywide efforts and infrastructure to maximize resources and impact. Efforts include expanding the safety net for systems-impacted youth and young adults, ameliorating housing and supportive services cliffs by strengthening the continuum of care and transition planning, strengthening targeted policy advocacy, and measuring the impact of Countywide efforts to inform pivots from those not yielding desired results and scaling up of effective approaches. 

The Prevention and Promotion efforts seek to align and leverage existing Countywide efforts, infrastructure, and relationships. They will develop and bolster the availability of and access to services, resources, and opportunities. Efforts also include increasing departmental staff knowledge and understanding of positive youth development, the emerging adulthood life stage, and effective practices for promoting thriving and well-being among this population. Countywide efforts impact will be measured to inform pivots from those not yielding desired results, and the scaling up of effective approaches. 

Homelessness & Housing: Older Adults: Ages 60+

Homelessness among older adults is increasing, and many factors contributing to housing instability among this population are closely linked to their life phase. 

Including the following: 

• An inadequate supply of affordable housing, in addition to economic hardship stemming from reliance on a fixed income, which often falls short of a livable income, a lack of a fiscal safety net, and an inability to earn additional income, can push them into homelessness. As a result, any type of emergency, such as a car repair, new medication not covered by insurance, or the death of a spouse, can push them into homelessness. 
• Older adults also experience age-related limitations in activities of daily life, mobility, transportation, and technology use that can lead to housing instability. Age discrimination related to income status and concerns regarding costs associated with compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act are also contributing factors. 
• One of the most significant contributing factors to housing instability and homelessness is the fact that older adults are often “unseen” and become “invisible” to mainstream systems. As with emerging adults, older adults are aggregated with the general “adult” population, and their unique needs are not distinguished or adequately addressed. 
• Bright spots in current efforts to address housing instability among older adults include efforts to strengthen strategic collaboration among County departments that serve this population and newer initiatives that provide short-term preventive supports to stabilize housing. 
• The California Master Plan on Aging and Measure A's passage also present opportunities to move upstream to enhance services and supports that promote housing stability and well-being for older adults. 

The PPSGC and CEO HI are partnering closely with the Aging and Disabilities Department to leverage the recently created Regional Coordinating Council on Aging and Disability (Council). PPCIT-established workgroups will coordinate the implementation of the resulting strategies and plans. Additional exploration strategies include the development of enhanced cross-departmental risk assessment tools and resource mapping, as well as improving data sharing to facilitate the identification of at-risk seniors and enhance care coordination.