Here’s a personal glimpse at the importance of local programs for children and families, as three stressed-out parents share how they found help and education in support groups. The California-based Children’s Advocate reports.

A New York City Department of Probation program, "Project Zero" offers alternatives to locking young offenders in juvenile jails, with an emphasis on rehabilitation and keeping young people connected to families and schooling. The program evaluates its progress regularly and makes adjustments based on the data—and is showing signs of success.

Last month, when we introduced our Searching the Sites Program, I hoped that we would turn up newsworthy community initiatives with a strong flavor of Who's Doing What That Works.

"This past February, nine teenagers in foster care geared up in their warmest winter apparel and snowshoed two and a half miles to a cabin in Jackman, Maine for a three-day retreat and intensive Getting Beyond the System Self-Advocacy Workshop..."

But think of the additional value we can bring to this process and to children when we think in the context of building a community around children; a community that knows them and that has a vested interest in meeting their most critical needs.

"The reality is that adopting a baby is very expensive," says Cathleen Schmidt, president and CEO of Citizens Bank in New Hampshire.

Leading evangelical Christians are preaching a new message to the faithful, asking them to open their hearts, and homes, to the options of adoption and foster care.

Baby Austin was literally thrust upon Frank and Kathleen Chester - by a blindfolded mother who warned: "I'm leaving him with you because, if I take him tonight, he might not be alive tomorrow."

Had it not been for them, I honestly don't know what would have happened, Sandra Elders says about the St. Louis Crisis Nursery.

Johnny Madrid's mother died when he was 11, and he was shuttled between 19 different foster care settings by age 18. When he aged out of the California state system he still had no permanent contact. He says this remains an issue for him to this day.