View a summary of Kinship Center’s 2010-2013 Strategic Plan.

Our Mission:

Kinship Center is a California nonprofit agency dedicated to the creation, preservation and support of foster, adoptive and relative families for children who need them. This year Kinship Center begins its second quarter century of building stable, permanent families.

Since 1984, Kinship Center has helped create and support families for thousands of children of all ages: those who can no longer remain safely with their birth parents because of abuse and neglect, and also those who are voluntarily relinquished for adoption as infants by their birth parents. Kinship Center is headquartered in Salinas, California with facilities and services in eleven Southern California, Central Coast and Northern California counties.

Dedicated to the belief that children need permanent families in order to heal and thrive, Kinship Center has created programs and services over the years to meet the needs of children, including those with past trauma, and to support the adults who step forward to provide them safe “forever families.”

Kinship Center been honored nationally for our life-changing outcomes for nearly 2,000 children each year through a variety of programs:

• Our adoption services include public awareness, parent recruitment, assessments and education, child placement, and support & counseling for birth families and for families after placement.
• Therapeutic foster care programs provide experienced temporary care for children who have been removed from their homes to keep them safe.
• Kinship Center mental health programs provide therapeutic assistance to children who have emotional, developmental or behavioral challenges as a result of past experiences.
• Our relative care programs offer critical services for grandparents and other relatives who have taken on the care of children to keep them out of the public child welfare system.
• The Wraparound programs provide intensive support to families in crisis, in order to keep children in a family setting rather than in residential care or psychiatric hospitalization.
• Kinship Center’s Education Institute is recognized nationally for providing state-of-the-art education for parents and professionals.

Kinship Center’s impact extends far beyond the children and families who receive direct services. The agency has taken a leadership role in the child welfare community and its programs have become models throughout the country. This ground-breaking influence has resulted in systemic changes that are dramatically improving the outcomes for children who cannot safely remain with their birth families.

Kinship Center depends on public and private funds to support all of its direct-service programs. We welcome you to donate now with an online or other gift. To see the most recent audit, please Click here

Kinship Center is licensed by the State of California, Community Care Licensing Division, certified by health and behavioral health departments in counties where clinics are present, certified by Regional Center for care of medically fragile and developmentally disabled children, accredited by California Alliance of Child and Family Services, and a member of the California Association of Adoption Agencies and Voice for Adoption. Kinship Center does not discriminate in the provision of its services, programs and products or in its employment practices.