The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to expand a successful collaboration with private foundations, aiming to fund a broader set of priorities.

Supervisor Hilda Solis highlighted $4.5 million in spending on services for children and families by the Center for Strategic Public-Private Partnerships.

Solis and Supervisor Sheila Kuehl co-authored a motion to extend the center’s mandate to include other board priorities, including homelessness, health integration, sheriff’s department and jail reform, environmental oversight and immigration.

“In its two and a half years of existence, the Center for Strategic Public-Private Partnerships has had an extraordinarily positive impact on so many lives,” Solis said. “By leveraging county resources and the generous contributions of the philanthropic community, we can collaboratively provide the most vulnerable populations with the assistance they need to not only survive, but thrive.”

Twenty-five foundations have worked with seven different county departments to invest that money.

“We have unequivocally proven that the public and private sectors can and do want to work together. And when they do, the potential for impact is unbounded,” said Kate Anderson, the center’s director.

The board’s vote transfers the center from the Office of Child Protection to Chief Executive Officer Sachi Hamai’s control and renames it the Center for Strategic Partnerships. It also directs staffers to develop a strategic plan and suggests that more staffing may be required, depending on the outcome of that planning.

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