About Us

If you are a young person in LA County who would like to become a Commissioner or share your experiences and feedback with Commission leadership visit our Get Involved page here. We’re currently accepting applications and would love for you to apply. As an organization working to center lived expertise from child welfare and juvenile justice systems, we accept people from all backgrounds.

Established in 2020 by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Youth Commission is the official youth advisory body to the County. We are a youth-led organization that promotes youth participation in County affairs and policy development. Our members have experience in the foster care, juvenile justice, and homelessness systems. The Commission also provides a forum for youth perspectives, empowering Commissioners to impact the systems that are intended to serve and support them, their families, and their communities. We are actively seeking our first team of Youth Commissioners who will help expand this website, so stay tuned for updates and news. If you’d like to receive updates as they happen, please visit to subscribe to our email updates.

The County of Los Angeles Youth Commission's goals include:

• Advocate, propose new legislation, provide recommendations to the Board of Supervisors regarding children, youth, families and their communities.
• Create a platform for young adults to be involved in civic engagement and shape policymaking.
• Provide leadership to effect transformative change for youth in Los Angeles County.
• Analyze policies, current practices, budgets, and programs of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, which include the LA County Department of Children and Family Services and the LA County Probation Department.
• To increase the number of young leaders from systems-impacted backgrounds in local government.
• Ensure that all County departments that serve youth be informed by the lived experiences and expertise of Youth Commissioners.
• Strengthen existing youth-focused initiatives and develop new ones.

Our core function is to help improve the policies, programs, and services that impact the lives of youth in LA County. We do that by engaging youth and young adults that have experienced foster care and/or the justice system and empowering them to influence the systems designed to serve them. The Youth Commission provides education, training, professional development, mentoring, and mental health services for youth in Los Angeles County. This Commission will also work to serve youth in LA County who have experienced homelessness, the foster care system, and juvenile justice systems.

The County of Los Angeles Youth Commission is difference because:

• Proximity to Decision Makers
• At the intersection of practitioners, policymakers, and youth
• Our Commission and its programs will be unique and the first in the County exclusively focused on empowering systems-involved youth to use their lived experience to develop policy
• While there are great examples of youth-led commissions across the country, the LA County Youth Commission is one of the first to compensate youth for their time and insights