BALTIMORE, MD.  — Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young announced today the creation of the Baltimore Children’s Cabinet, a working body charged with helping lead the administration’s commitment to—and focused investment in—the city’s children and youth.

The creation of the Children’s Cabinet is the latest step by the mayor to redouble his commitment to making sure young people in Baltimore succeed and thrive. This summer, Mayor Young established the Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success to create urgency and momentum around improving the quality of life for Baltimore’s children and families—through citywide coordination of services, policymaking, strategic resource allocation and deep engagement with partners and the community.

A critical early step in this work is to tap the expertise of city and state agencies and key external partners to align and bolster the city’s collective youth-serving efforts. So Mayor Young is convening the Baltimore Children’s Cabinet to prioritize and guide the work of the city—and the Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success, in particular—on behalf of children and families.

“Those who know me know that my commitment to Baltimore’s families—and our young people, in particular—runs deep. It is my priority to create a system of supports that will lift up our children and make our families whole,” said Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “The good news is that we already have much of the expertise and many of the programs in place to do that. We just need to focus that expertise, align it and channel it toward a set of clearly defined priorities. The Children’s Cabinet will facilitate that approach.”

While Baltimore has had variations on a children’s cabinet periodically over the years, it has not had a dedicated leadership body focused on young people in more than a decade. This newest iteration will have approximately two-dozen members spanning city and state agencies with youth-serving programs and a few key external partners. The Children’s Cabinet will be chaired by Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success Executive Director Tisha Edwards, and have a clear set of goals and priorities in support of those goals. It will meet bimonthly and have working subcommittees that move the priorities forward during non-meeting months. And in the spirit of hitting the ground running, the Children’s Cabinet is identifying its goals at its kickoff meeting today.

The Children’s Cabinet was given a set of preliminary goals to inform today’s goals discussion, along with three focus areas identified by Mayor Young.

The three areas of focus:

• Understanding and removing barriers to a healthy cradle-to-career (0-24) trajectory for our youth
• Better coordination of programs and services, data and metrics
• Attention in all that we do to the biases and inequities embedded in our systems

The preliminary goals:

• Strengthening early childhood development networks
• Addressing youth food insecurity
• Increasing the literacy rate among youth
• Reducing youth homelessness
• Deepening trauma-informed care among youth-serving agencies and organizations
• Expanding youth diversion practices
• Addressing historical barriers that prevent the success of boys and young men of color

“These goals cast a broad net but accurately reflect the incredibly broad scope of work before us to make sure our young people have access to the opportunities, resources and supports they need and deserve,” said Tisha Edwards, Executive Director, Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success. “The work is really about addressing deep, institutional poverty in ways that will—and where we must—move the needle.”

For more information about the Baltimore Children's Cabinet and the Mayor's Office of Children & Family Success, please visit www.bmorechildren.com.