Safe & Sound
“Strengthening families. Building communities. Protecting childhoods.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Safe & Sound is a children's advocacy organization working to prevent, stop, and ultimately end child abuse locally in San Francisco and reduce its prevalence regionally. We believe every child should grow up safe, protected, and loved. We're taking a stand to make that a reality.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Children & Family Services
Safe & Sound uses early, focused interventions to build Protective Factors correlated to reduced risk of child maltreatment, and achieve significant reductions in family violence before violence occurs. We work to disrupt the cycle of abuse through a trauma-informed intergenerational approach to provide empowering support to both parents and children. Our programs support families with evidence-informed direct support services that provide wraparound interventions to families living in circumstances that place them at risk for abuse. These include:
-Therapeutic Children’s Playroom: provides 4,000-5,000 free childcare visits each year
- Parent & Child Education: Classes and support groups that strengthen children’s social emotional learning and give parents the tools to foster healthy development.
- TALK Line: Operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and handles over 8,000 calls annually.
- Concrete Needs Support
- Integrated Family Services
Community Education
This program strengthens the city’s safety net by teaching kids, parents, and child-serving adults to recognize, report, and stop abuse and by raising community members’ awareness and strengthening their capacity to build Protective Factors. Through our collaboration with SFUSD, our Child Safety Awareness trainings provide students with tools to keep themselves safe and offer adults information about how parents and caregivers can support children's safety and respond to suspected abuse. Our trainings for parents reinforce the messages we provide to children and offer tools for supporting children's safety. Meanwhile, we continue to foster community partnerships to scale our IFS model. This includes delivering outcome-focused services through two coalitions, the SafeStart and Sunset Family Resource Center Collaboratives, comprising six Family Resource Centers, for which we are the lead agency.
Strategic Partnerships & Policy
Safe & Sound maintained and deepened our partnerships across the city, engaging in 17 new collaborative partnerships and enacted, adopted, or refined 15 policies, protocols, or memoranda of understanding last year to better serve children and their caregivers in a time of great need. Aligned with our initiatives to strengthen families, protect children, and end child abuse, Safe & Sound continues to work at the local, state, and national levels—with partners including US/HHS Administration of Children & Families, Casey Family Programs, and the Aspen Institute—to create a 21st Century child and family well-being system: a healing community of care focused on prevention and addressing the disparate impact of child welfare involvement on families of color.
Center for Youth Wellness
Our Center for Youth Wellness programs aim to transform the way society responds to children
exposed to ACEs and toxic stress.
Where we work
External reviews

Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of groups brought together in a coalition/alliance/partnership
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Strategic Partnerships & Policy
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
We will facilitate strategic partnerships and collective impact to improve the city support for families and the abuse response network.
Number of eligible clients who report having access to an adequate array of services and supports
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Family relationships, Ethnic and racial groups, Social and economic status
Related Program
Children & Family Services
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Supported by our Children & Family Services (CFS), families will increase stability, access to basic supports, and other Protective Factors against abuse and adverse experiences.
Number of clients who self-report increased skills/knowledge after educational program/intervention
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Community Education
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Our Community Education programming will promote increased knowledge and skills to recognize, report, respond to and prevent child abuse.
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?
Child abuse is a complex problem, an invisible epidemic that happens more than you can imagine. We must recognize child abuse is not somebody else's problem.
Safe & Sound envisions a future free from childhood trauma, where all children, families, and communities are
safe, supported, and loved.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Safe & Sound Strategic Plan sets forth Priorities that are the basis for Safe & Sound’s long-term vision for the next three years. Harnessing insights gained from our research and human-centered design workshops created by People Rocket and conducted with involvement across the organization and within the community, we saw the importance of building distinct and growth-oriented priorities. In initiating this co-designed strategic plan, we further aimed to build off of our successes and lessons learned from our challenges overcome these past few years. These Priorities are an overarching umbrella that families, community, and team members can consider as our North Star:
➔ Pathways Toward Healing & Equity Safe & Sound strives to be a healing organization and lead within a trauma-informed system to improve community wellbeing for everyone.
➔ Collective Impact We seek to continuously improve our programming to better meet the needs of children, families, and community at the local, state, and national level.
➔ Operational Clarity We understand the importance of workplace wellness through effective communication; expanded training; and, people-centered, equitable, and data-driven decisions and infrastructure enhancements.
➔ Sustainable Growth We recognize and support the potential of all employees, volunteers, donors, investors, and partners to further our vision, mission, and values.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
For nearly 50 years, Safe & Sound served San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area community, by being an advocate for children, educate the community, and support families. Our comprehensive programming aims to improve the health of children, families, and communities exposed to child abuse, neglect, trauma, and other adverse childhood experiences through trauma-informed interventions, trainings, and community resources. Our work includes: 1) advocating for laws, policies, and practices with government and community organizations to strengthen families and improve the child abuse response system and safety net; 2) partnering with the community and educating children, adults, and child-serving professionals to understand and prevent abuse and neglect; and 3) supporting families with evidence-informed and strengths-based services that bolster the safety and stability of families—with no shame, no blame, and no stigma. We are a safe and trusted place where families can ask for and receive help. Safe & Sound has the capacity, expertise, collaborative relationships, and envisions a future free from childhood trauma, where all children, families, and communities are safe, supported, and loved.
One of our core strengths has always been to remain resilient in a changing landscape and continually to advocate for children and families. We pivoted services and mobilized millions of dollars during crises in recent years: growing economic inequities, affordable housing shortages, restrictive immigration policies, wildfires, and COVID-19. We have done all this while continuing to reach approximately 12k children, parents, caregivers, and child-serving professionals annually. We have been guided by a trauma-informed and healing lens, working to recognize our own complicity in unjust and oppressive systems.
Safe & Sound strives to be a healing organization and lead within a trauma-informed system to improve community wellbeing for everyone. We cannot heal without acknowledging our own history of contributing to the trauma of marginalized, oppressed, and underrepresented communities. We will challenge and confront oppression of all kinds within our own practices and culture. As a safer, braver organization, we can better advocate for the children, families, and community we support. We believe in working across generations to empower children, enable parents, and support families, where Protective Factors are core to strengthening families, building communities, and are at the heart of the work we do. We utilize an evidence-informed approach that allows us to effectively design our programs, measure their impact, and innovate to achieve improved outcomes. Finally, we believe that everyone has a role to play in ending child abuse, neglect and trauma, and must work in partnership to create collective impact—a collaborative approach to tackling complex social problems, which activates stakeholders across sectors to create change.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Over the past 15 years, our programs have directly served over 150,000 individuals and contributed to a 64% reduction in the rate of child abuse and a 46% reduction in entries into foster care in San Francisco. And we are positioned to serve even more in the future. We’re thrilled and honored that next year marks 50 years of Safe & Sound standing as a pillar in our community! Our work advances our vision of a future free from childhood trauma, where all children, families, and communities are safe, supported, and loved. Ending abuse and neglect has the potential to change the path of the lives of children, and to save our community billions in societal costs related to health care, law enforcement, and incarceration each year.
In June 2021, the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) and Safe & Sound joined together as one organization to strengthen families with an intentional focus on expanding our trauma informed services to address the huge medical and economic toll of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
Over the last year, 8,200 children and caregivers were served through Safe & Sound’s suite of supportive services—representing a 29% increase over previous years.
In addition, through collaboration, advocacy, and research, Safe & Sound has continued to improve collective action and policy to transform systems to prevent and respond to abuse in our community, our region, state, and nationwide. Highlights of the growing impact of our policy work include: ● Collaborated with Family and Children Services to better engage community organizations in planning for the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA). We share more information below about this transformative legislation. ● Navigated California Assembly Bill 2085 through the State Assembly and before the Senate. The bill limits the definition of general neglect to only include circumstances where the child is at substantial risk of suffering serious physical harm or illness, and provides that general neglect does not include a parent's economic disadvantage. ● Collaborated with many state and local partners to create the Data Playbook For Prevention Action Planning. ● In collaboration with other family- and community-serving organizations, published an issue brief entitled Creating a Child & Family Well-Being System: A Paradigm Shift from Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting, outlining a path to reform our current system of mandated reporters to one of community supporters that keeps families strong and together. ● Joined San Francisco and California leaders in condemning the anti-transgender actions of Texas state officials, including participating as amicus (friend of the court) to explain that gender-affirming care is not child abuse, and in fact, deprivation of such care and/or forcible detransition is potentially child maltreatment.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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.
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.
Safe & Sound
Board of directorsas of 01/30/2023
Sarah Whitelaw
Managing Director, Hall Capital Partners, LLC
Bill Barnes
Chief of Staff, Office of the City Administrator
Chuck Chai
President & Chief Investment Officer, Hillspire, LLC
Erik Edwards
Partner, Cooley LLP
Aparna Kota, M.D.
Pediatrician, Clinical Associate Professor, Kaiser Permanente, University of California San Francisco
Christopher C Stewart, M.D.
Professor of Pediatrics, Attending Physician, Medical Examiner, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital
Jason Di Piazza
Director of Business Development, Farallon Capital Management
Anthony Heckman
Head of Growth & Founding Team, unitQ
Hilary Mendola
Healthcare Consultant
Katie Riester
Head of Investor Relations, Felicis Ventures
Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh
Executive Vice President, Industries Salesforce
Douglas Tom
Pricipal, TEF Design
Tina Bou-Saba
Advisor & Investor
Jillian Manus
Managing Partner, Structure Capita
Angela Ty
Partner, KPMG LLP
Lisa R Villarreal
Retired, Chief Executive Officer, Youth Ventures Joint Powers Authority
Alisa Williams
Partner, VMG Partners
Amy Ambrose
Senior Director of Development Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
Arron Jiron
Philanthropic Advisor
Patricia Duffy
Attorney
Rachel Castillo
Group Design Program Manager, Adobe
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
No data
Gender identity
No data
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 05/03/2021GuideStar 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 disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- 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 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 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.