About Us
Breaking Barriers California, established in 2014, is built on the conviction that only through collaborative planning and problem solving can we ensure the educational, social, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing of California’s children and youth. We believe that integrated systems are required at statewide, countywide, and local levels to achieve a long-lasting impact.
We serve as a Whole Child Hub, realizing collaboration across systems and communities to address needs that no one agency can meet on their own. We are a statewide backbone for integrated care benefiting our children and youth. We advocate, coordinate technical assistance and training, translate lived experience into research and policy, and sustain a community of practice around building the most robust, effective and sustainable ecosystem possible. In doing so, we work to ensure that California's unprecedented investments, resources, and support lead to the most measurable and robust outcomes possible.
A Message From Our Founder, Elizabeth Estes
To our current and future partners and collaborators,
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As I sit here today I am amazed at the extraordinary efforts California has made in the past decade towards integrating our agency and community resources to better support our children, youth, and those who serve and support them. That said, we have a long way to go. Services and supports remain difficult to access. Agencies and organizations continue to focus on preserving their infrastructure more than the wants and needs of our children and our youth. And outcomes in California continue to not reflect our extraordinary abilities, talents, and resources. As a native Californian who has dedicated her life to the children here, we should be the most successful state in the nation at realizing the goals we have for our young people, and the goals they have for themselves.
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My hope for the next generation is that they grow up in a united California, at the state and local level, that prioritizes getting them what they need, when they need it, as best we can, at all times throughout their young lives. Because that is what they deserve. And that is what we all need. Our young people are not just our children and youth. They are our future. They are our economy, our workforce, our hope, and our chance. Because of that, we must put everything we have into enabling them to achieve the outcomes they want for themselves and into building the conditions for their success. And the only path to that is if we unite.
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In partnership,
Elizabeth