Speak Up for Kids Palm Beach County
Reaching 100% ADVOCACY for EVERY CHILD abused, abandoned or neglected in our community.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Reaching 100% advocacy for every child in Palm Beach County in the dependency system. Guardian ad Litem (GALs) are court appointed volunteer child advocates. They come from all walks of life, but they are united in their commitment to our most vulnerable children. GALs begin their involvement in the Court system. No child should have to go to Court alone; volunteer child advocates stand up for them and become their voice. It is in the Court system that the most important decisions are made about the future quality of that child's life, such as where the child lives and with whom, and whether their needs are being met. The Court places great weight on what the GAL has to say. Should the child be placed in the foster care system, the advocacy doesn't stop there. The volunteer child advocate remains with the child for the entire time that they are in the system. They work to ensure that this child lives as normal a childhood as possible. A volunteer child advocate also has acc
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Supporting the Palm Beach County Guardian ad Litem Program
GAL program – provides community advocates and professional staff to create a powerful voice on behalf of children in the dependency system.
Guardian ad Litem Volunteers (GALs) are trained, court-appointed advocates for children who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected. They are provided to investigate a child’s situation, monitor parties involved, report all findings, advocate for the child’s best interest and facilitate needed services to ensure successful development, the right to a safe and permanent home, and create a better future for these children.
The GAL takes the opportunity to be a truly dedicated volunteer by meeting with the child’s relatives, school teachers, foster parents, and others involved in that child’s life. But most importantly, the GAL will also meet with the child in order to reassure them that they are there to be a trusted person in their lives and to help them with whatever they may need.
Foster Palm Beach
Speak Up For Kids, through their Foster Palm Beach program, is devoted to finding caring homes for abused, abandoned, & neglected children in Palm Beach County.
Speak Up for Kids supports the Guardian ad Litem Program which in turn advocates for the best interest of a child in care. Having a caring home is paramount to the child's best interest!
Foster Palm Beach's primary goal is to recruit Foster Parents for Foster Children but we are always interested in helping you find your place in helping the children of our community.
If you aren't yet ready to be a foster parent, please consider being a Volunteer Child Adovcate through the Guardian ad Litem Program or donating through Speak Up for Kids of Palm Beach County who provides much needed support for these children. Learn more at www.galpbc.org and www.speakupforkidspbc.org
Students Speak Up For Kids
STUDENTS Speak Up For Kids empowers students with opportunities to serve and speak up for the children involved in Palm Beach County's dependency court system.
The goal is to provide positive youth development through equipping community kids to help foster kids by giving kids the tools to create their own advocacy campaigns.
Where we work
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of Facebook followers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Number of Facebook followers
Total number of volunteer hours contributed to the organization
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Supporting the Palm Beach County Guardian ad Litem Program
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Volunteer hours 2020 hours were affected by COVID
Number of volunteers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
2021 and 2022 there was a volunteer shift to more STUDENT Speak Up For Kids volunteers and internal SUFK volunteers from Guardian ad Litem volunteers.
Number of clients served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
2021 & 2022 overall children in care numbers dropped, this is good and a trend 2020 reflects COVID impact. Not as many children were sheltered. Services increased for those in care.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Speak Up for Kids (SUFK) mission is 100% advocacy for every abused, abandoned, and neglected child in Palm Beach County. With the vision of a community where every child is nurtured, supported, and has access to connections and resources necessary for them to know their value and reach their full potential. We champion best-interest child advocacy through the recruitment, training and retention of court-appointed volunteer child advocates. Through effective advocacy the cycles of abuse, violence, and crime are being broken one child at a time, and children’s futures are being rewritten. These volunteers are committed solely to each child’s emotional, educational, and physical well-being throughout dependency court proceedings. 640+ volunteers work with the children directly, and then in a team approach to represent the child’s best interests.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
By supporting the Guardian ad Litem by providing additional staff to make case loads manageable to reach 100% advocacy.
By providing essential training needs to ensure new volunteer guardians are being certified and existing guardians are able to get re-certification hours.
Our initiatives:
Palm Beach County Guardian ad Litem Program
The Guardian ad Litem Program, with 640+ volunteers serving greater than 1,600 local children is the heart of our support. The court-appointed, one-on-one, best-interest focused, advocacy provided by these ‘Guardian Angels’ presents the best safety, permanence, and normalcy outcomes for children involved in dependency cases.
Students Speak Up for Kids
Through STUDENTS Speak Up for Kids, we encourage 'Student-led' project-based advocacy benefiting foster kids. STUDENTS Speak Up For Kids places youth at the helm of advocacy and empowers them with opportunities to serve and speak up for the children involved in Palm Beach County's dependency court system.
Music Buddies
Inspired by our STUDENTS Speak Up for Kids program, Jocelyn and Aden created Music Buddies. With a goal and vision to provide foster kids with music lessons, some of these children will settle into a permanent place in a school band or become a member of a musical ensemble. Jocelyn and Anden intend to heal and change lives with the power of music.
Growing Grads -
Graduation is a milestone! Only 30 - 50 percent of foster children graduate from high school. In partnership with Leadership Palm Beach we developed “Growing Grads” 3 components: event, gifts, scholarship- (1) 'Graduation Celebration(2) 'Gifts for Grads', swag bags filled with community contributions(3) Celebrating YOUth Scholarship.
Therapeutic Court
Therapeutic Court is an award-winning pilot, the first of its kind in the United States, serves the most complex cases in our county through a round-table team approach. Every agency involved in the child's case is represented and held accountable, with progress monitored in a single weekly meeting with Judicial oversight.
Early Childhood Court
Because victimhood does not discriminate based upon age, Early Childhood Court targets the best interests of infant and toddler victims and their families. It is a programmatic imperative to find safe, permanent as quickly as possible to establish normalcy in as expeditious a manner as possible.
Foster Palm Beach
Seeing the ongoing need for more foster parents, Speak Up For Kids created the Foster Palm Beach program, a community-wide approach to raising public awareness about the critical need for foster families to care for Palm Beach County's children and assisting in the coordination of credentialing for new foster homes.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Through grants and fundraising we will be able to hire the positions to reach 100% advocacy. This is obtainable this year.
The overall goal of Speak Up for Kids is to support the Guardian ad Litem (GAL) Program with the resources to provide every abused, abandoned, and neglected child in the Palm Beach County dependency court system with a well‐trained, court‐appointed volunteer advocate. As a State funded program, the GAL Program is not permitted to solicit alternative funding sources. This was intentionally done by our legislators in an attempt to get charities to participate in the caring of foster children. Therefore our state only funds 80% of the program. Speak Up for Kids of Palm Beach County, Inc. was formed as a 501 (c) 3 under a special state statue to raise funds specifically for gaps in the Guardian Ad Litem Program. Without our efforts, there would be even fewer children served.
In assembling a team that includes an attorney, a case coordinator and a volunteer child advocate, the GAL Program has discovered the most efficient and cost effective way to serve the greatest number of children. For every GAL attorney that is funded, they can support 2 Child Advocate Managers that supervise 75 volunteer Guardian Ad Litems (GALs), who, in turn, are able to advocate for the needs of 150 children in our foster care system. We call this our “Equation of Hope".
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
This year we reached 100% advocacy in 2 areas of Palm Beach County and we are at 98% now. That is with an increase of 14% of children in care.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Speak Up for Kids Palm Beach County
Board of directorsas of 02/05/2024
Mr. Scott Penney
Concetta Theros
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 03/25/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.