Our North Star

At Children’s Institute, we believe in the boundless potential of all children and families to achieve emotional well-being and educational success, which build pathways to lifelong health and economic mobility.

Meeting the Moment

Children’s Institute is undertaking this strategic refresh during a period of heightened uncertainty and complexity. Federal funding cuts, civic unrest, and increasingly harsh immigration enforcement underscore the urgency of safeguarding CII’s integrated behavioral health, early education, and family support services.

Theory of Change

Our theory of change is both a guiding framework and a living tool, connecting our program model to long-term impact and generational change:

CORE PRIORITIES

Together, four core priorities are the building blocks of CII’s North Star—for families, staff, and the communities we serve:

• One CII: What We Deliver for Families
  There is no wrong door. Regardless of which need brings a family to us, CII identifies and connects families to the full range of programs and partner supports. A streamlined registration and intake system also facilitates staff collaboration, reduces administrative burdens, and prioritizes mental health emergencies and clinical needs.
  
  
• People & Culture: Who Delivers the Work
  CII has a thriving and engaging workforce, aligned to a shared mission. Team members feel valued, supported, psychologically resilient, with clear pathways to learn, grow, and advance.
  
  
• Systems & Infrastructure: How We Work
  Advanced technology and system design that strengthen program operations and impact. Improved workflows enhance accuracy, improve outcomes, and enable data-driven decision making.
  
  
• Financial Health: How We Sustain CII
  Ensuring CII’s long-term sustainability. A diversified, innovative, multi-year financial strategy integrating scenario planning and strategic priorities with budgeting and forecasting enables CII to plan for funding shifts and ensure resources for our highest impact work.

 

TO LEARN MORE AND SUPPORT THIS WORK, PLEASE CONTACT:

Catherine Atack, Chief External Officer
catack@childrensinstitute.org
(213) 260-7701

Ian Ryen, Vice President of Impact Investment
iryen@childrensinstitute.org 
(213)260-7650

In March, Children’s Institute (CII) hosted an intimate gathering of local community members and supporters in honor of Women’s History Month.

As CII marks its 120th anniversary, building a stronger sense of community and connection feels especially meaningful. In 1906, founder Minnie Barton opened her home to support vulnerable women in Los Angeles—including young, single mothers with nowhere else to turn.

Today, that legacy endures. Nearly 90% of CII’s staff are women, and women and girls make up more than half of the 30,000 children and families served across its programs each year.

“Our work has always been shaped by the strength and leadership of women,” said Martine Singer, CII’s President and CEO.

Hosted by CII Board of Trustees members Mary Rohlich, Supriya Batra, and Megan Smith, When Everything Changes: Stories of Care, Healing, & Life-Saving Support created a space for CII program experts to share their experiences of helping women and children.

Megan Smith, who also moderated the conversation, reflected on what stood out most: CII’s ability to connect with families from the birth of their children through preschool, and into kindergarten, when intervention can have the greatest impact.

For families with children in school, Dr. Liliana Hernandez, CII’s Vice President of Community Behavioral Health & Youth Services, spoke to the urgency many face—particularly the fear and instability caused by immigration enforcement activities. “These pressures are compounding and affecting families at every level of their lives,” she said.

She recalled a 10-year-old student who had completed their intake assessment with CII but missed a follow-up appointment. When their clinician reached out, the child’s mother shared that she and her son had been deported and were now living in El Salvador—an experience that underscores how quickly families’ circumstances can change.

From a broader level, Singer emphasized that where a child grows up continues to shape their future in profound ways. “In Los Angeles County, a child born in Watts can have a life expectancy more than a decade shorter than a child born just 12 miles away in Beverly Hills,” she said.

These inequities, she noted, are not accidental—they are the result of longstanding policies. From redlining to disinvestment, entire communities have declined without access to opportunity, capital, and resources.

Earlier this year, Dr. Brandi Eichstedt, CII’s Director of Early Childhood Behavioral Health, launched Happy Mommies, Healthy Babies, a community-based maternal mental health program in South Los Angeles.

“If a mother is experiencing depression or anxiety and not receiving prenatal care, that stress carries over to her baby in utero which increases the likelihood that bonding will also be disrupted after the baby is born,” Dr. Eichstedt shared.

“Our Happy Mommies, Healthy Babies program is building bridges—working with mothers and their children from birth to age five by strengthening those parent-child connections through therapy, education, and coaching.”

In her closing, Megan Smith reflected on the enduring legacy of women supporting women. She spoke to the many roles women hold—as mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends—and how care and connection across generations have always been at the heart of deep impact.

“Communities of women supporting women is a tradition that stretches back millennia and yet remains deeply rooted in CII’s work today.”

This month, nonprofit and philanthropic leaders gathered at the Children’s Institute for the convening, Courage & Collaboration, The Shrinking Safety Net: A Coordinated Response from Nonprofits & Philanthropy.

In her opening remarks, Martine Singer, President and CEO of Children’s Institute, underscored the urgency of coming together amid an unprecedented moment.

“Across Los Angeles, families are navigating extraordinary challenges,” she said. “Rising costs and inflation are pushing housing further out of reach. Proposed federal cuts to the very programs that keep families afloat are creating real fear about the future. And intensified immigration enforcement has shaken the sense of safety in communities that already live on edge.”

Frontline Perspectives

Moderated by Ana Ibarra, Health Reporter for CalMatters, the first of two panels featured nonprofit providers across various segments of the human services sector— education, housing, family and early childhood development, healthcare, food insecurity, and LGBTQ youth services.

Echoing Singer’s opening remarks, Jesse Locke, Clinical Program Manager for Behavioral Health at Children’s Institute, described 2025 as a pandemic of fear and an atmosphere of constant hypervigilance in public spaces for the families and communities she serves.

“From the mental health side, how can a parent be that supportive co-regulator to their child when these are all their stressors,” she said.

Over the summer, when ICE forces entered Los Angeles, school-age children were not spared as witnesses to seeing community members being unlawfully taken or removed from their neighborhood.

When ICE forces descended on a Home Depot in the Westlake Pico-Union enclave, Ambar Martinez-Aguayo, Communities in Schools-LA Site Director, recalled that “our students could see the raids…they saw men with masks, in hats, taking their parents away, taking their siblings, taking their community.”

The tenuous circumstances have also led to greater absenteeism in schools across the County that ultimately result in budget cuts and staff vacancies, including counselors and therapists.

“How do you really assure these students when you’re just not sure yourself…when you’re not sure what is going on and can’t really explain what’s going on,” said Martinez-Aguayo.

Among community clinics, the impact of medicaid reductions through the federal H.R. 1 spending bill passed and signed into law in the summer has resulted in patient no-shows and delays in care. Then, a proposal by Health and Human Services (HHS) to disclose medicaid data with immigration enforcement agencies only made matters worse.

Dr. Aimee Le, Associate Medical Director and pediatrician at Saban Community Clinic, described the impact as having a ‘snowball effect’ on younger children.

“Trauma and chronic stress have been linked to obesity, cardiovascular disease, poor academic success in school, and this becomes a vicious cycle [with] detrimental effect to their long-term healthcare,” said Dr. Le.

Earlier this year, executive orders rolling back protections for LGBTQ communities became a precursor to larger cuts in suicide prevention programs. As a result, the nationwide suicide and crisis lifeline, also known as ‘988’, no longer gives callers the option to connect with a counselor trained in supporting the unique needs of LGBTQ youth living in crisis.

Nova Bright, Director of Training and Learning Development at the Trevor Project, highlighted that the California-response to this shift in services has resulted in funds being set aside to train call centers within the state to serve LGBTQ youth.

At the same time, she warned that “LGBTQ youth are at a massively increased risk for suicide…[so] unless we take a national approach, there are going to be LGBTQ young people all over the country who don’t have those resources.”

Within the housing services sector, the combined impact of funding cuts at the local, state, and federal level, are creating dire circumstances for individuals, youth, and families, such as the immediate loss of rental subsidies that keep residents in housing and working towards self-sufficiency, explained Bernice Saaverdra, Deputy Chief Program Officer of Systems and Regional Planning at LA Family Housing.

Additionally, the situation is compounded by the growing need for food and food assistance since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Prior to the pandemic, we were serving approximately 300,000 people in LA County per month, through our network of partner agencies and through our direct distribution,” said Hilda Ayala, Senior Director of Programs at LA Regional Food Bank. “Now, we’re serving a little over 1 million people per month.”

The Organizational Impact of Rising Needs and Dwindling Resources

Moderated by Efrain Escobedo, President and CEO of Center for Nonprofit Management, the convening’s second panel featured nonprofit executive leaders discussing the impact of funding cuts within their organization.

“Our work is very much across networks. We cover Los Angeles County…there [are] capacity challenges…it can be facilities, it can be people, it can be funding, it can be volunteers…and that is a real concern as we see some of these cutbacks come in,” said Michael Flood, President & CEO of LA Regional Food Bank.

The current funding crisis has also led to the closures of access centers across Southern California, where the unhoused or those living on the edge of homelessness access critical life-saving resources. As a result, nonprofits are also bracing for the immediate future.

“We are thinking about cuts down the road, so we have been training many of our outreach workers to do the work of an access center,” said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, President and CEO LA Family Housing. “We’re not meant to wear twelve hats…[and] we are asking people to have multiple roles to close the gap for where the system is failing.”

At neighborhood schools, teachers and staff are being confronted with a reality where their personal and work lives become increasingly inseparable.

As Elmer Roldan, Executive Director of Communities In Schools-LA, explained, “Our staff, in particular, are having to do more with the same amount of resources or less. They’re the ones that are having to figure out what is happening at home, and how they’re navigating the situation in their own household, and then coming back and putting on their cape and trying to help students who are dealing with tremendous amounts of crisis.”

“We’ve had to support patients in ways we weren’t doing before …one of the things we’ve done differently is to lean into more [patient] advocacy,” said Muriel Nouwezem, Chief Executive Officer at Saban Community Clinic. “We felt it was really important for us to [explain] to patients what H.R. 1 means and how it’s going to translate in coverage.”

For nonprofit organizations, reacting to constant changes makes planning for the short and long-term nearly impossible. As Singer explained, “We’ve gone through scenario planning exercises over and over again. It takes a huge amount of effort. It takes away from creativity and peace of mind…creating tremendous stress and strain and fraying of infrastructure, the more you have to do that.”

A Powerful Call to Action

The conversation and workshop sparked a powerful call to action: nonprofits and investors must unite more often to tackle shared challenges and design bold, sustainable solutions. By collaborating creatively, participants saw opportunities to stretch limited financial resources and amplify collective impact. Investors, in particular, can play a catalytic role—fueling the innovation and risk-taking that smaller organizations often can’t afford alone. Together, we can unlock new revenue streams, close critical funding gaps, and ensure local programs not only survive but thrive for the communities that rely on them most.

Special thanks to co-hosts of the Courage & Collaboration convening: Communities in Schools-Los Angeles, Saban Community Clinic, Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, LA Family Housing, the Trevor Project, CalMatters, and the Center for Nonprofit Management.

 

Across Los Angeles, fear is destroying childhood.

At Children’s Institute, we see it every day in the faces of the children and families we serve. Since the beginning of 2025, fear of immigration enforcement has become a daily reality—disrupting school routines, upending family rhythms, and weakening the sense of safety that children need to grow and thrive.

As journalist Jenny Gold recently reported in the Los Angeles Times, early learning and care providers in Los Angeles face a tidal wave of fear.

This is not an abstract fear. It’s the real, lived experience of a mother afraid to walk her child to one of our Head Start preschools. A parent rushing to one of our centers to pick up her child because ICE is in the neighborhood. A child scanning the door at pickup time after a day at summer camp, unsure if his parent will return. Attendance has dropped in our preschools, our clinics and at community events. Many families feel isolated and without support.

When attendance drops, it’s more than just empty seats—it’s children not getting meals, not attending counseling appointments, and losing access to safe spaces that buffer them from trauma. And families, especially those already living in poverty, are left without the lifelines that help them survive day-to-day. Parents often must stay home with children who can no longer safely attend programs, destabilizing household incomes and pushing families further into economic insecurity.

We’ve seen this before. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us how fragile the infrastructure of care and education can be—and how quickly families can slip through the cracks. We cannot let that happen again.

Invest in Children’s Institute now. The safety net is shrinking, and the number of children and families who need it—and rely on it as an essential support —is growing every day.

At Children’s Institute, we are dedicated to maintaining this vital safety net, but we cannot do it without your support.

Your generosity powers our ability to:
• Keep our early learning programs open and accessible
• Reduce barriers to mental health services and care navigation
• Provide emergency relief—including in-kind donations—for families facing displacement, fear, and economic loss

This is not a moment for business as usual. It is a moment to meet fear with care, and uncertainty with action.

Let’s ensure that fear does not become the new normal for Los Angeles’ children. Let’s make sure they have what they need: a place to learn, people to trust, and a path forward.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the incredible women in our organization who make our work possible every day. Their dedication, compassion and leadership drive our North Star forward, ensuring that children and families in our communities receive the support and opportunities they deserve.

This March, we recognize and honor their invaluable contributions in creating a brighter, more equitable future for all. Thank you, Martine Singer, Noemi Vasquez, Ebony Clinton and Stephani Gonzalez for all the ways you’ve dedicated your lives for others.

Please enjoy each of these videos!

Martine Singer, President & CEO 

Noemi Vasquez, Care Coordinator

Ebony Clinton, Clinical Program Manager

Stephani Gonzalez, Senior Community Engagement Specialist