The last decade has seen a growing recognition of the need for post-permanency services as a means of achieving the wellbeing of children and youth who were in foster care. Ensuring the availability and sustainability of an array of post-permanency services to support former foster children and their permanent families—whether birth, kinship, or adoptive—can be viewed as the next challenge for child welfare agencies. The development of the Child Wellbeing Project in Catawba County is an example of a local community rising to meet this important new challenge. Comprises three separate Briefs. Link to pdf Brief 1 Link to pdf Brief 2 Link to pdf Brief 3
Tag Archives: Foster Care
Promoting Development of Resilience Among Young People in Foster Care
It is critical for systems that serve young people in foster care to support them in developing resilience in the face of risk and adversity. This involves a shift from a focus on deficits to a focus on strengths, from risk amelioration to enhancing protective factors, and from considering resilience to be a static trait to understanding resilience as a continuous, interactive process. Link to Issue Brief
Making Healthy Choices: A Guide on Psychotropic Medications for Youth in Foster Care
A guide for youth to help them in making decisions about their health and psychotropic medications involves five steps plus one:
- How do I know if I need help?
- What are my rights?
- What are my options?
- What information do I need?
- How do I make sure I am taking my medication safely?
- What should I do about medication when I am leaving foster care?
This guide presents valuable information for youth in foster care related to each step. Depending on your situation, selected sections or the entire guide may be useful to you. The guide’s checklists and worksheets can help you organize your thoughts. Link to pdf Guide
The Texas Blueprint: Transforming Education Outcomes for Children and Youth in Foster Care.
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Texas issued an Order Establishing the Education Committee of the Permanent Judicial Commission for Children, Youth and Families (Children’s Commission). This order was the Texas response to mandates in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. The Education Committee collaborated to create recommendations to improve educational outcomes of children and youth in foster care. The recommendations fell into eight categories:
- Judicial Practices
- Data and Information Sharing
- Multi-Disciplinary Training
- School Readiness
- School Stability and Transitions
- School Experience, Supports, and Advocacy
- Post-Secondary Education
- Future Collaboration
YouthThrive
Center for the Study of Social Policy: This multi-year initiative examines ways to support foster youth that advance healthy development and well-being and reduce the impact of negative life experiences.
Youth Thrive has two goals:
- To give child welfare agencies and their partners a way to translate the federal mandate for child well-being into actions that will secure the healthy development of youth in foster care. CSSP has examined the research knowledge-base to identify protective and promotive factors that build healthy development and well-being for youth as they move through adolescence into adulthood. The synthesis of the research and the Youth Thrive Protective and Promotive Factors Framework will be shared with the field, and used to fashion policies, programs and interventions that promote health and well-being. CSSP anticipates creating tools and trainings for practitioners working with at-risk youth, parents, foster parents and relatives caring for youth, group homes and other facilities and child welfare agencies.
- To disseminate this information to parents, caregivers, families and communities so that they will better understand how they – in their respective roles – can prioritize healthy development for young people to grow into successful, productive and caring members of society.
Michigan College Support Guide for Foster Care Alumni
This guide is for by anyone who is interested in learning more about programming and scholarship support resources on Michigan’s higher education campuses. This includes, but is not limited to:
● Youth and alumni of foster care
● DHS case managers and education planners
● Local College Access Network coordinators
● Foster parents and caregivers
● High school counselors and college advisors
Includes: Ferris State, Michigan State, University of Michigan and Western Michigan University. http://www.detroitcollegepromise.com/fostercare.pdf