CITC Parent's Journey - Growing Stronger Together - • Parent’s Journey- Growing Stronger Together • Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc. • 3600 San Jeronimo Dr., Anchorage, AK Anchorage, AK 99508-2869 • (907) 793-3600 • info@citci.org • citci.org Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc. (CITC), a tribally authorized social service agency, proposes Parent’s Journey- Growing Stronger Together (PJ-GST) to support community-based efforts in a tribal community to prevent child abuse and neglect and to strengthen and support families. PJ-GST will operate, expand, and enhance CITC’s Parent’s Journey program, which for 20 years has continuously provided primary prevention activities designed to meet the needs of children and families before any child is put in harm’s way-- to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect in Anchorage, Alaska. Through PJ-GST, CITC will partner with families and the local community to implement and adapt services that build on strengths and address needs of the local community, reaching families who face a range of challenges. Anchorage, currently home to 38,671 Native people, consistently ranks as the city with the greatest proportion of Native residents nationally, and the 6th largest number of Native residents, behind only the much larger Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and New York. Project need is driven by Alaska’s child victim rate, which falls well above the national average at 13.0 victims per 1000 children. Native families are disproportionately involved in child maltreatment cases, both statewide and in Anchorage. Of children in Out of Home (OOH) care in Alaska during March 2026, 70% were Native; in the Anchorage Regional Office, an average of 66% of children in OOH care for the 12 months ending in March 2026 were Native. Yet Native children comprise roughly 19% of the Anchorage population under age 18, and roughly 28% of the Alaska population under age 18. Over 60 months, CITC proposes to offer parenting education classes using the Parenting Journey curricula, conduct outreach to community partners so as to increase and diversify program referral sources, and reinforce protective factors through informal family engagement activities.
