Permanency Tip of the Week: Coordination of Permanency Efforts
In the pursuit of Permanency for our Youth in Foster Care, one of the issues that can easily be overlooked is the critical importance of coordinating all the non-placement efforts involved. This is especially critical when the Permanency involves moving into a new family home. Beyond the placement issues, other important issues involved can include mental / physical / dental health, education, extra-curricular activities and visits with family of origin / friends / former caregivers. If any of these additional issues are overlooked, it can threaten the entire foundation of the newly found Permanency. Let’s be sure that we stay coordinated!
Permanency Story of the Week: Foster Kids Overcome Obstacles, Graduate High School
It was an emotional ceremony for 175 foster kids in Los Angeles County, who overcame obstacles to mark a big milestone in their lives – they graduated high school and all of them are heading to college. It was a proud moment for the high school graduates at Walt Disney Concert Hall Thursday night. They were recognized for outstanding academic achievements, and all of them are setting their sights on college, thanks to a million dollars in scholarships. Many of the teens have spent years in the Los Angeles County foster care system. Determination, hard work and a lot of support helped them overcome the obstacles.
Current Permanency related articles:
Fostering Relationships – Relationship Based Tools and Online Trainings
Fostering Relationships, a program of A Home Within: 1) Explains the effects of trauma and offers practices that promote growth and healthy relationships; 2) Provides online trainings & innovative tools for trauma informed care support caregivers, staff, and volunteers working with foster youth and other vulnerable populations; 3) Offers professionally created materials make relationship-based practices available to everyone working with vulnerable children and families; 4) Created decks of Conversation Cards help to engage traumatized youth in important discussions.
Fostering Success Michigan Launches National Post-Secondary Support Map
Fostering Success Michigan and Casey Family Programs have launched a new, interactive map that provides students who experienced foster care, professionals, and supportive adults with a centralized location for information about Statewide Support Organizations, State Tuition Waivers, and four-year University Campus-Based Support Programs that specifically serve students who experienced foster care. Users can locate campus-based support programs by clicking on individual states and “pins” as well as using filters that allow users to look up statewide support programs and tuition waivers. Currently, two-year college campus-based support programs are not included in the map. Users who know of a four-year university campus-based support program, statewide support organization, or state tuition waiver that is not included on the map, can email information to: fostering-info@wmich.edu.
Older Children Often Neglected in Adoption Process
There is a growing need for families to consider adopting older children. Older children, including sibling groups and special needs youth, often get left behind. According to the Children’s Action Network “several foster care alumni studies show that without a lifelong connection to a caring adult, these older youth are often left vulnerable to a host of adverse situations.”
States Tackle ‘Aging Out’ of Foster Care
With a few exceptions, foster youth traditionally aged out of the system at 18, with no backup services to ease them into adulthood. More often than not, it made for an abrupt transition for youth without a parental safety net. But thanks to the Foster Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (FCA), a federal law enacted in 2008, states can now extend foster care benefits to youth up to age 21 and receive federal funding for it.
New Report Highlights “Soft Skills” That Support Youth’s Workforce Success
A growing evidence base shows that “soft skills” rival academic or technical skills in their ability to predict employment and earnings, among other outcomes. Unfortunately, there has not been a clear consensus about which soft skills are most critical for workforce success. A new publication by Child Trends helps bring clarity to the field by recommending a research-based set of key soft skills that increase the chance that youth ages 15–29 will be successful in the workforce. According to the report, there are five critical skills most likely to increase odds of success across all outcomes and which employers expect employees to have: social skills; communication; and higher-order thinking skills (including problem solving, critical thinking, and decision-making); supported by the intrapersonal skills of self-control and positive self-concept. The authors recommend the active inclusion of these skills in workforce programs as a mechanism for facilitating improved outcomes.
2015 – KIDS COUNT Book from Child Trend
The 2015 edition of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual report on child well-being focuses on the state of America’s children in the midst of the country’s economic recovery. In addition to ranking states in several areas of child well-being, the Data Book also examines the influence of parents’ education, health and other life circumstances on their children. Child Trends is pleased to provide ongoing technical assistance to the KIDS COUNT Data Center.
Winter 2015 CW360°—Culturally Responsive Child Welfare Practice
Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) staff, in partnership with the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies at the University of Minnesota–Duluth, developed the Winter 2015 issue of CW360º. The intersection of culture and child welfare practice has been considered and conceptualized in a number of ways, from cultural competence and institutional racism to disparity and dis-proportionality.