Speak Up For Kids champions best-interest child advocacy. 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.
Speak Up for Kids serves all children in Palm Beach County's foster care system. The children range in age from newborn through 18 years old from diverse ethnicities and races, backgrounds, and socioeconomic circumstances, all with unique physical, social/emotional, educational, and normalcy needs.
Since 2008, Speak Up for Kids has partnered with the Office of the Guardian ad Litem (OGAL) to provide capacity building, volunteer recruitment and retention, and direct support to children in the foster care system.
With limited state funding, the OGAL has a restricted number of staff to effectively manage the amount of dependency cases in Palm Beach County, where at any given time 1,400+ children are in need of advocacy in court.
Speak Up for Kids cultivates partnerships and funding through grants, donations, corporate engagement, special events, and community support to reinvest in the recruitment and retention of Volunteer Child Advocates and respond to their direct funding requests to meet the unique needs of each child.
Speak Up for Kids creates a community culture of support for these children through strategic partnerships and targeted initiatives.
Office of the Guardian ad Litem – direct child advocacy while in-system care
Embrace Kids – discretionary fund to support child's best interest
Specialty Courtroom Programs – therapeutic & early childhood roundtable
Foster Palm Beach – local foster home recruitment
STUDENTS Speak Up for Kids – peer to peer, awareness and advocacy
Gift A Birthday – birthday celebration
Celebrating YOUth – milestone celebrations and scholarship fund, removing barriers to higher education
PARENTS Speak Up for Kids – resource hub of foster and dependency-specific information
Our Impact – annual report