MOCKINGBIRD SOCIETY
2100 24th Avenue South, Seattle, WA 981444645 www.mockingbirdsociety.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: The Mockingbird Society's mission is to transform foster care and end youth homelessness.

The Mockingbird Society creates, supports, and advocates for racially equitable, healthy environments that develop and empower young people at risk of, or who are experiencing, foster care or homelessness. Working in partnership with young people with lived experience, we change policies and perceptions standing between any child and a safe, supportive and stable home. We envision each young person, regardless of race or individual experience, reaching adulthood with an equitable opportunity to thrive.

Mockingbirds Youth Programs is a powerful, state-wide coalition of young people aged 13-26 who have experienced - or are experiencing - foster care and/or homelessness. The program focuses on youth leadership development, civic engagement, system reform and educating the public on foster care and homeless youth issues. In 2019, over 300 youth and young adults participated in activities such as local chapter meetings, leadership trainings and community engagement projects. There are seven chapters; two in Seattle, and one in Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, Yakima and Spokane. Each chapter's youth are actively engaged in shaping an annual systemic reform agenda. Youth meet regularly with policymakers, participate on issue work groups, speak at community forums and offer creative ideas to improve child welfare and homeless youth systems based on their own experiences.

MOCKINGBIRD FAMILYrecreates the positive qualities and resources found in naturally thriving families in part through the role of the Hub Homean experienced and licensed foster care family who provides support to other foster and kinship care families participating in MOCKINGBIRD FAMILY. The community network created by MOCKINGBIRD FAMILYfocuses on the individual needs of its youth by ensuring foster parents are highly skilled and effective in providing the best care. When foster families are developed and brought into a supportive community like MOCKINGBIRD FAMILY, social workers are more able to focus on successful reunifications and other meaningful permanency options. In 2019, 289 children and youth in Washington were served by Mockingbird Families, foster parents were retained at 90% (compared with the states average of 63%), and almost 25,000 hours of respite care were provided which helped with retention and placement stability. Outside of Washington, we served an additional 687 children and youth, including in California, New York, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Working with the young people in our youth programs, The Mockingbird Society's Public Policy and Advocacy program advocates for upstream system reform. Over our 20 year history, we have played a role in over 30 statewide policy changes that have positively impacted our most vulnerable children, youth and young adults. In the 2019 state legislative session, after three years of education efforts, Mockingbird led the successful push to disallow judges in Washington from jailing minors for status offenses (non-criminal actions such as running away or truancy). Washington has jailed for status offenses more than any other state in the country; the incarcerations showed clear racial and gender biases, and worsened outcomes for at-risk youth. We were also successful with our lead priority to include more youth with lived experience on oversight boards and committees: the legislature expanded both the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) Oversight Board and the Office of Homeless Youth (OHY) Advisory Committee to include more young people with lived experience.

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Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202041629349301414_public.xml