About us

Programs and technology for lasting family connections

Connected images of a family sitting on a snowy porch, two women looking at a laptop, and two professionals working at a whiteboard.

Alongside is a nonprofit working to transform child welfare systems so they better serve youth in foster care. We believe every young person deserves family that nurtures their growth and potential—and a home where they feel at home.

We have 50 years of experience in the sector. Our partners have brought us in on problems without easy answers. We pair social workers with technologists—people who understand the emotional realities of foster care and build the tools that can reshape the system. Through deep collaboration, we deliver forward-thinking solutions that support all paths to permanency while keeping the needs of young people in focus.

Throughout the Northwest, we recruit and prepare families to provide permanency and stay alongside them through the hard parts of caregiving. We help young people tell their own stories and shape their own futures, including through our award-winning In-Depth Profiles® model. Through national initiatives like AdoptUSKids and regional programs, we build the technology that connects youth and their caseworkers with potential families and sparks conversations that can lead to relationships.

We see and champion the strengths of everyone involved in this work—resilient youth, their dedicated caseworkers, and the loving families who step up. We are fiercely optimistic that the child welfare system can work the way it should.

Alongside youth, families, and child welfare professionals, we’re designing solutions so that every young person has lasting family connections.

What sets us apart

We work toward our vision of every young person having the family they need through direct services and systems design, guided by the following values and commitments.

Creative solutions
Our programs and technology redefine best practices in child welfare.

Focusing on youth, always
Whether we’re working directly with youth, writing code, or recruiting families, we center young people experiencing foster care in every decision.

Starting from strengths—and building on them
We champion the dignity, resilience, and resourcefulness of the youth and families we serve and of the child welfare professionals who support them. This philosophy shapes our programs and how we show up for each other as colleagues.

Meaningful collaboration
We believe the best solutions are the ones we create and own together. That’s why we prioritize partnership—and why we strive to be the people and the organization you most want at the table.

Passionate people
Our teams bring expertise and care to hard problems. People join us because they want their work to matter, and they stay because it does.

Continuous systems improvement
Child welfare systems can always work better for the young people they are meant to serve. We continue to push for ever more inclusive and effective solutions.