A Better Way was founded in 1996 as a Foster Family Program. Since then, we have grown into a comprehensive foster and adoption services agency, providing adoption, community training, parent advocacy, and behavioral health services to children and families at risk or involved with the foster care system. The mission of A Better Way is to empower children and families to develop the insights, life skills, and permanent relationships that promote their social, emotional, educational and economic well-being.

A Better Way has provided foster care placements for thousands of children and has finalized hundreds of adoptions. We are the one of the few organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area with expertise in assessing and providing behavioral health services to children 0-5 involved in the social services system through pre- or post-adoption, outpatient mental health, and reunification services.

​A Better Way has provided behavioral health services to thousands of children, many of whom live in our communities’ most impoverished and violence-ridden neighborhoods. In addition to behavioral health services, we provide intensive support and case management for parents pursuing reunification through our Parent Engagement Program with the help of parents who have successfully navigated the reunification process.

As a training center for foster parents and service providers, A Better Way provides thousands of hours of training per year in Alameda and Solano Counties – primarily through Title IV-E Training contracts with Chabot-Las Positas Community College. We coordinate and provide comprehensive training on an array of topics to professionals from other agencies, A Better Way staff, County personnel, and foster and birth parents.

Annually, A Better Way serves hundreds of foster and adoptive children and families though behavioral health services and the Parent Engagement Program. All of A Better Way’s programs emphasize a strengths-based, capacity-building approach that helps parents and families achieve lasting success.​