Our impact

Shaping a movement for transformation

For decades, previous activists and organizations worked to improve child welfare systems, and although the voices of youth and families were clear, and the research continued to mount about the lifelong predictive harms of family separations, the system was built to blame, shame, separate, and punish—rather than support—families in times of need. We believed there was a better way.

However, when Alia was founded, many in the child welfare ecosystem still needed to be convinced that the system needed to change. The idea of obsoleting it, to instead build a system that focused on supporting and preserving families was radical. Alia needed to make the case for change and create a sense of urgency – nurturing the belief that we must do something NOW; not just better but DIFFERENT. 

Alia trained tens of thousands of child welfare workers and leaders, judges and attorneys, Court Appointed Special Advocates and Guardians ad Litem, foster and adoptive parents, legislators, and community members across the country. Influencing their mindsets and beliefs about child welfare and sharing our vision of an UnSystem that focused on community-led support and prioritized keeping families safely together.  

To help build the case that the child welfare system must be obsoleted and replaced, Alia created new evidence-based supports, including:

Over time, the Alia way of thinking, and our collected evidence and case for change began shifting mindsets across the ecosystem. These days, we no longer get called to help “convince” people to change, now the calls sound like, “We get it, but HOW do we make the change?” This is where Alia’s experience as a “Do Tank” comes— in we believe there are some things you cannot know until you try them. We’re not just talking about it, we’re doing it— real change with real people on the ground in more than 30 communities every year.

Since our founding, Alia has completed hundreds of engagements reaching tens of thousands of changemakers in all 50 U.S. states and Canada. Through these partnerships in diverse communities, we have learned that redesigning the child welfare system starts with influencing innovative leaders in systems and in communities to think differently. After preparing systems to humble themselves to families and communities, Alia works alongside systems and impacted parents to co-design new ways forward.