About Us
Our is mission is to facilitate and support safe, unconditional, and lifelong connections for people who have or will have their child welfare services terminated (also known as “aging out”).
A young person whose child welfare services are terminated (also known as “aging out”) does so without the one thing they were promised when they entered – people to support them through life who are not paid to be there, “Humans” in Never Too Late (NTL) language.
Never Too Late (NTL) was co-founded in 2018 by people who believe everyone has a right to permanency. We are a community of people who believe that everyone has the right to belong with people who love and value them unconditionally throughout their life.
We work to recruit, connect, educate and train, support, and advocate, to give back to Living Experts of child welfare systems the chance to have “family” to rely on, no matter their age.
Our Initiatives
Recruitment and education/preparation of families/people who want to be Never Too Late (NTL) parents/Humans
Support and connection for people who have aged out of the child welfare system.
Support and connection for people/families who have become the permanent connection for a young person at age 16 or older.
Collaborating and working with other organizations who are interested in finding connections and working with young people on these crucial relationships.
Our Community
Lived Experts are at the center of all we do. We like to visualize our community as circles enveloping each other to show how support flows from the outer circles, toward the inner circles.
Lived Experts
Humans & Caregivers
Service Providers
Never Too Late (NTL)
Community Supporters & Collaborators
Community Supporters & Collaborators can include anyone who supports Never Too Late (NTL) directly, such as donors, or indirectly, such organizations that we partner with who share our passion and values. We also feel it also includes community champions for Lived Experts and anyone who believes in and/or is working towards better relational outcomes for Lived Experts.
Living Expert (or Lived Expert) is the term that Never Too Late (NTL) uses to refer to people of any age who have lived experience within the child welfare system and/or permanency journeys.
*Human is the term Never Too Late (NTL) uses for the role of caregiver/parent. It comes from a lived expert of child welfare expressing that along with financial supports and services, someone who ages out of child welfare wants a human being who is not paid to be there in their lives. We use the term to respect that for many people the word family or parents are ones they are not comfortable using for these connections because of past relationships or trauma. Regardless of the words used, Humans are the unpaid, life long, safe, unconditional supportive connections.
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Our Approach: Community Development
One key defining principle of community development is seeing community members as experts in their own experience and working to build community capacity. Lived Experts of child welfare and permanency journeys have been organizing and raising their voices on belonging, supportive resources, safety and life outcomes for many years.
At Never Too Late (NTL) we seek out and center voices of Living Experts. We listen first, lead with curiosity, and identify common challenges faced by our community. Recognizing and valuing the expertise of individuals who have living experience, we seek to employ and engage Living Experts at every level of Never Too Late (NTL)’s structure including Board Members, Advisory Team Members, staff and contractors.
Our Community Coordinators focus on organizing educational opportunities and encouraging peer-to-peer support to empower community members, build relationships, and facilitate collaboration. We hope that this approach helps move community members through shame and isolation towards confidence and interdependence.
Our Values
Accountability
By striving to be realistic (not over or under promising), transparent in our decision-making processes, and to create meaningful inroads for feedback and participation in our work.
Belonging
Going beyond tolerance and inclusion of the “other”, belonging comes from a felt sense of safety and being understood. It requires an intentional practice of cultivating room to be vulnerable and brave within our community and within the connections we support and facilitate.
Community
We do everything in the spirit of interconnectedness, assuming good intentions while simultaneously acknowledging the impact of our thoughts, words and actions on our relationships with one another.
Safety
Making continuous efforts to establish safety (actual) and a felt sense of safety (realized) is integral to our mission and foundational in the establishment of our values. As an organization that engages in trauma-responsiveness learning, we strive to follow evidence-based and creative solutions in the pursuit of safety in our community and relationships.