About QPI Sites

In 2008, the Youth Law Center launched the Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI) in Florida, as a pilot advocacy project committed to ensuring that all children in care have excellent parenting and
lasting relationships so they can thrive and grow.

Today, QPI leads and provides advocacy support to a national movement that includes 80 sites and 10 states comprising children and youth, birth and foster families, foster care agency leadership and staff, judges, legal professionals, policymakers,
adolescent development experts, and other community stakeholders all committed to ensuring every child in foster care receives the best possible care and support.

QPI is an advocacy strategy, method, and approach to
transforming a foster care system so that it can support family
care. It is built on the understanding that consistent, excellent
parenting and meaningful relationships are the most basic needs
and key rights of children and youth in foster care. Systems
must ensure that every policy and practice enhances rather than
undermines their ability to meet these needs.

Recent QPI innovative advocacy strategies include:

  • Establishing the Champions model and training over 450 local
    community members as advocates and leaders of change.
  • Launching Quality Parenting Outreach (QPO), a text-based data
    collection system used by QPI sites to directly engage all foster
    parents and kin in agency decision-making.

QPI has brought about important changes in policies and practices
at the federal, state, and local levels designed to safeguard children’s
relationships, their ability to live with families, and their participation in
typical childhood experiences. Examples of QPI policy impact include
new policies and practices that require improvements such as youth
and family involvement in decision-making processes, ensuring vital
information is shared with foster parents and kin, supporting positive
relationships between biological, foster, and extended kinship families,
implementing age-appropriate visitation and smooth transitions for
children, and prioritizing child-centered placement practices.

Read more about the impact of QPI through YLC’s impact report.

Read the Impact Report
  • Joint birthplace of QPI in 2008
  • Joined Champions training program in 2022
  • Joined QPI in 2020
  • Began QPI Champions training program in 2020 with the first cohort graduating in 2021
  • Joint birthplace of QPI in 2008
  • Active participants in the QPI Champions Program since 2020

Kansas

  • Joined QPI in 2021
  • First Kansas QPI Champion training cohort graduated beginning of 2022 having completed six months of QPI training, agency coaching and discussion
  • Joined QPI in 2016
  • Joined the Champions training program in 2023
  • Joined QPI in 2017
  • Piloted QPI Champions program in 2020
  • Joined QPI in 2011
  • Washoe joined QPI Champions program in second cohort in 2020
  • Joined QPI in 2021
  • Graduated first cohort of QPI Champions in 2021
  • Joined QPI in 2014
  • Joined the QPI Champions training program in 2022
  • Joined QPI in 2014