Child Welfare & Foster Care
Children and young people need safe, stable and supportive homes. For those who don’t live with a parent, the foster care system can help find a permanent alternative —but not all state systems are equally effective, especially when it comes to supporting teens transitioning from foster care to independent adulthood. Get the bigger picture from national experts in our Intro Video (coming soon!)
Beta User Feedback
Email Newsletter Signup
Sparks: A Monthly Expert Blog
Whether you're new to this issue or a longtime expert, our Sparks blog can help you stay up to date. Each month, we ask a different expert to weigh in on important and under-reported developments to watch.
Feature Stories
Here's an in-depth look at how a group of charter schools are working with homeless students who have dropped out of or been expelled from public schools -- and finding success reconnecting students to high school and getting them ready for post-secondary opportunities.
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Connect for Kids pulled together online resources for helping those affected.
The Youth Transition Funders Group, an affiinty group of more than 30 national and regional foundations, has mastered the most sensitive and essential messaging in child/youth advocacy: keeping your own members and supporters enthusiastic, engaged and making a difference. Child Advocacy 360 takes a look at how YTFG does it, and the take-aways for other organizations.
This video joins celebrities and youth intervention workers to support the Youth PROMISE Act. The Youth PROMISE Act (HR 1064/S 435) is bipartisan legislation that will give our communities the support and funding they need to effectively address youth violence issues.
The child and youth field spends millions of dollars on research, but if the findings get lost in crowded inboxes or stacks of publications, do they really count? In her May 2010 Youth Today column, Karen Pittman says too few of us hear about the findings, but that's something we can -- and must -- change.
Youth Voices
The National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) is one of the Employment and Training Administration’s seven partners in the Intergovernmental Recovery Act Collaborative that provides technical assistance to the workforce system. In the past year NAWB has collected and uploaded over 150 promising practices and success stories on Summer Youth Employment programs from last summer.
Having legal immigration status is an important part of planning for the future. When youth age out of foster care with no status, they are stuck.
What Kids Can Do is putting out a fresh call for youth stories.
We're looking for strong examples of middle and high school-aged youth working as a team and spreading their wings: making a difference in their community, solving problems, being artists and performers, stretching themselves intellectually, pushing for change on issues that matter to them.
When you learn that a teen is in foster care, what is your reaction? Empathy? Curiosity? Apprehension? News stories and popular media portrayals of young people involved with the child welfare system, paired with selective statistics about how this population is faring, can feed apprehension at the expense of a more positive view of the strength that can come from overcoming adversity.
Caitlin Crane of Portland, Oregon has put homelessness and addiction behind her, and is reaching for a bright future with her young son. With help from a non-profit dedicated to steering teen mothers towards success, Crane is beating the odds, and reaching out to help other young mothers do the same. Linda Baker asked Crane to talk about what teen moms need to get ahead.
Take Action!
The Promise Neighborhoods program – one of the most innovative and exciting federal efforts to combat poverty and lift up millions of poor children – needs your help. On Tuesday, July 27, the Senate appropriations subcommittee is expected to consider Promise Neighborhoods.
Representative Conyers (MI) is circulating a letter asking his fellow members of Congress to co-sign a letter to members of the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility to ensure that commissions' work is open and transparent.
The Promise Neighborhoods initiative needs funding to realize its promise! The Alliance for Children and Families and United Neighborhood Centers of America are sponsoring a sign-on letter asking Congress to approve full funding for this initiative.
As the health care debate continues in Congress, make sure your representatives include children's coverage in the discussion, especially for the millions covered under Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program.
On February 23, 2009 the House of Representatives passed the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs bill H.R. 911.
Latest Resources From the Field
The House of Representatives passed a historical, bipartisan bill aimed at protecting our nation’s children.
How Health Reform Helps Low-Income Children covers how the Affordable Care Act sustains Medicaid and CHIP funding, enhances enrollment in the programs, further expands children’s coverage, and increases their health care benefits.
Cyberbullying of kids by kids is, unfortunately, a year-round activity. Schools are out of session, so is it the school's (partial) responsibility to discourage this behavior--and to punish transgressions? Right now it isn't, but it could--and probably should--be.
Read more about cyberbulling and schools:
Ronald McDonald House Charities invites applications for their Youth Health and Well-being grant program. Programs must be national or global in reach. Successful proposals will directly improve the health and well-being of children, address a funding gap or critical opportunity, produce measurable results, and be sustainable.
Find tools and information quickly on the redesigned Child Welfare Information Gateway website. The new site offers easy navigation, access to popular content from the homepage, and new interactive features. Visit the site to see how easy it is to find the resources you need as a professional.