Legal Services for Children (LSC)
Project: Theory of Change
About Legal Services for Children:
Legal Services for Children (LSC) provides free representation to children and young people who require legal assistance to stabilize their lives and realize their full potential. LSC’s child-driven, healing-centered, and trauma-informed approach combines legal and social work services to support children to have safe and stable homes with loving caregivers, access to legal immigration status, freedom from detention, and access to education.
Why Legal Services for Children partnered with Lyons-Newman Consulting for its theory of change project:
After a leadership transition, LSC’s new executive director wanted to convene the staff to focus on big-picture questions for the organization, including better defining their theory of change and how their work is understood across the organization. They wanted to coordinate this process with upcoming staff retreats to build engagement and momentum.
The process:
We first surveyed the board and staff to gather initial ideas on LSC’s intended impact. Then, in the first of two staff retreats, staff worked together to envision LSC’s future and refine the organization’s intended impact. A small committee of staff consolidated feedback from the retreat and built a draft of LSC’s theory of change, which was then further refined at the second staff retreat. LSC’s team also engaged community partners and a group of former clients to contribute to the theory of change. Throughout the process, we built community and engaged staff and board members in the theory of change process and the work of the organization.
The results:
LSC’s theory of change clearly outlines how the organization positively impacts the world and defines the results they will hold themselves accountable to achieving. It also articulates:
The critical needs within the community that the organization addresses
Primary beneficiaries of those services
The organization’s key leverage points
The activities carried out to address the community’s critical needs
Outputs of those activities
Intermediate outcomes from the organization’s activities
What Legal Services for Children says:
“Belinda and Erica led us through a clear and thoughtful process that brought our whole organization together to focus on the purpose of our work: stabilizing the lives of children and youth in crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area and empowering them to become thriving adults. Creating the theory of change brought our teams into better alignment, surfaced ongoing challenges we are continuing to work toward resolving, and gave us a guide to refer to whenever we discuss possible changes to our programs.” — Cathy Sakimura, Executive Director
Pictured below: At Legal Services for Children’s first of two staff retreats, staff worked together to envision LSC’s future and refine the organization’s intended impact.
