San Diego supervisors present proclamation for Child Abuse Prevention Month; community groups highlight support programs for foster youth

Supervisor Anderson presented a proclamation recognizing April as Child Abuse Prevention Month for San Diego County and invited Promises to Kids to address the gathering.

The proclamation was presented “on behalf of all my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors,” Supervisor Anderson said, thanking county Child and Family Well‑Being Department staff.

Promises to Kids CEO Tanya Torosanian told the audience that prevention work aims to support families before they reach crisis. “One of the most powerful ways to help children thrive is by supporting the families before they reach a crisis point,” Torosanian said. She described the nonprofit’s Pinwheels for Prevention Garden and fundraising to support foster‑youth programs, and said the group has partnered with county agencies for more than a decade.

Destiny Cole, a former foster youth and participant in Promises to Kids’ Guardian Scholars Program, described her experience in care and the role of mentoring and financial supports. “I am resilient,” Cole said, recounting time in care from early childhood and later as a teenager. She said Promises to Kids provided mentorship and opportunities that helped her pursue a career in construction and plan for a future in project management.

Resource parent Mary Anne Pascall, who said she has fostered more than 400 children over 35 years, emphasized trauma‑informed care and family reunification. “One of the most important things to spread the word to have more people be resource parents is helping the children with their trauma and, most importantly, remember the objective is reunifying families,” Pascall said.

Alfredo Grado, director of the county’s Child and Family Well‑Being Department, urged community involvement in prevention and gave county and national figures. “Each year over 3,000,000 cases of child abuse are reported across the United States,” Grado said, and he described local trends the department reported since its creation: child abuse and neglect cases have declined by 50 percent and entries into foster care have decreased by 67 percent. Grado also cited this fiscal year’s call volume to the county child abuse hotline, saying the hotline received over 38,000 calls and that 18,000 of those calls became reports assigned for investigation involving about 36,000 children.

Grado and speakers promoted 2‑1‑1 San Diego as a 24/7 resource referral line for families seeking services. The transcript included a garbled phone number for the child abuse hotline; the exact hotline number was not specified in the meeting record provided.

Promises to Kids described a new pilot program, Foster Future, launched in January to provide guaranteed income funding alongside services such as therapy, case management and financial literacy for 50 formerly‑fostered youth. The organization also cited mentoring outcomes from its materials: “58 percent of adults who are mentored as youth say that mentoring has supported their mental health and 74 percent say that mentoring significantly contributed to their success later in life.”

No formal vote or ordinance was recorded in the transcript; the event consisted of a proclamation presentation and remarks by nonprofit and county representatives. The proclamation was presented and acknowledged during the ceremony; no formal adoption or roll‑call vote appears in the provided record.

For more information on Promises to Kids and ways to volunteer or donate, speakers directed listeners to promisestokids.org. Individuals seeking county resources were directed to call 2‑1‑1 San Diego; the child abuse hotline number announced in the transcript was not clearly recorded in the provided text.