A Second Chance, Inc

A Second Chance, Inc. began as a vision of President & CEO Sharon L. McDaniel while serving in another professional capacity. It was there that she saw firsthand the disparity between the large numbers of African-American children requiring out-of-home placement care, with the availability of African-American families providing such care. Some other concerns included the lack of concentrated efforts by the child welfare system to recruit African-American foster adoptive families, the absence of strong, viable support systems to African-American families already in the system, and the failure to acknowledge relative placements as a viable resource to children.

A Second Chance Inc., in cooperation with the office of Allegheny CYF, provides a full range of kinship care services that are operated under the regulations and requirements of the Allegheny County Foster Care Task Force. Some of the agency's services include, but are not limited to, the following: case management services, intensive kinship care training, crisis interventioninformation/referral services, continuity of services, counseling and other support services. What is unique about this agency compared to other related organizations is that this is the first program in the Commonwealth that exclusively offers such services to kinship families through a private, non-profit entity.

Mission Statement:

To strengthen and preserve healthy kinship families for children.

Vision Statement:

A world where all youth are given an equal opportunity to grow into responsible adults; where abuse and addiction cycles are broken.

Goals:

• To educate communities in an effort to prevent the cycle of child, drug and alcohol abuse; To provide children and families with kinship alternatives as a primary placement option;
• To extend knowledge gained and expand organizational capacity with traditional and non-traditional constituents;
• To enhance long-term financial security, and;

To maintain state-of-the-art facilities, technologies and operations.