Elevating Innovation in
Child Welfare
A call for exciting, early-stage projects with the potential to improve the lives of children and families impacted by the child welfare system.
Announcing the 2025 Springboard Prize for Child Welfare Winners
The Springboard Prize for Child Welfare invests in new, exciting ideas focused on preventing child neglect and abuse, lifting up children and families within the child welfare system, and assuring their well-being beyond. The Springboard Prize is a two-year monetary award designed to encourage and support early stage projects and ideas that innovate in the child welfare system.
We want to thank all those who applied for this year’s Springboard Prize – hundreds of inspiring initiatives that showed ingenuity, determination, excitement, and commitment to helping children and families touching the child welfare system.
From the many impressive projects, we chose three to spotlight this year.
- Tasselturn’s Homeplace College Network helps foster youth attending high school find pathways to college through educational coaching and college advising, opportunities to meet with college recruiters, and identifying the right college for each individual. The Network partners with colleges and universities to reserve spots specifically for foster youth, and guides young people through the application and financial aid processes unlocking millions of federal dollars dedicated to foster youth.
- The Arizona Department of Child Safety, together with Mathematica, is working to build AI tools to help caseworkers in Arizona more quickly and efficiently learn complex family histories and make smarter decisions about what is best for youth in the child welfare system. By easing burdens for caseworkers, the department hopes to move children towards permanency more quickly and overall, improve outcomes for youth in the system. Its goal is to model and scale such tools for use by caseworkers in agencies across the country.
- Foster Success works nationally to support young adults transitioning out of foster care with a range of programs aimed at financial empowerment, educational success, and workforce readiness. Through Credit Build, one of its financial empowerment programs, foster youth have opportunities for no-risk savings-secured loans and trauma-informed financial coaching to support them in establishing credit, laying the groundwork for long-term financial security.
Please watch our awardees tell you about their innovative work in this short video along with previous Springboard Prize winners sharing about their projects, and more information about the prize itself.
The Aviv Foundation is looking forward to launching the next Prize in 2027.
Why the Springboard Prize for Child Welfare?
Countless parents, social workers, advocates, and other leaders in the child welfare system work tirelessly to address some of the most complex challenges facing children and families. At the same time, we know the current child welfare system too often lets down the hundreds of thousands in foster care and those at risk of entering the system.
We believe innovation is critical to creating meaningful and sustainable change. The Springboard Prize for Child Welfare aims to create a more equitable and brighter future for at-risk children and families by uncovering new ideas and helping them grow.
Meet Past Awardees!