Saturday, May 31, is National Aging Out of Foster Care Awareness Day. The observance exists because what happens to young people at the moment the system releases them is, by most measurable standards, a national failure. Approximately 20,000 youth age out of the U.S. foster…
May 31 is National Aging Out of Foster Care Awareness Day. Every year, approximately 20,000 young people reach the age of majority and exit the foster care system in the United States. They leave without a permanent family, without a home to return to after…
Teaching life skills to teenagers is something I started thinking about far too late. I had a foster teen in my home who was smart, capable, and genuinely likeable, and I noticed much later than I should have that she had no idea how to…
The first time I tried a real vacation with a foster child, I planned it the way I would have planned any family trip. I researched the destination, planned the transportation, and made sure we had entertainment and snacks. What I had not planned for…
One of the things I learned slowly, too slowly, during my years as a foster parent was that I could not protect children into resilience. I tried. I arranged things so that failure was unlikely, intervened before frustration peaked, smoothed over conflicts that probably needed…
Staff turnover in youth-serving organizations runs as high as 40 percent per year. Most administrators treat this as an HR problem — a cost to manage, a vacancy to fill, a disruption to program continuity. The research says it is something more serious than that….
May is National Foster Care Month, a good time to think about how our youth organizations can help children in foster care. Not every organization is positioned to become a foster family, and we are not asking you to. But there is a wide space…
Building resilience in children from hard places is one of the things foster parents discuss most often when I attend conferences. It always comes up as a specific question: how, exactly, do you build it? And what does it look like when you are standing…
This week your calendar has two observances that belong in the same conversation. National Foster Care Day fell on Tuesday. National Skilled Trades Day is today. That overlap is coincidental. The importance of trade school to foster youth is not. I have spent years working in…
I drove past a county courthouse last week and counted forty-seven blue pinwheels spinning in the wind. They looked cheerful. They always do. And every April, I feel the same complicated mix of gratitude and frustration when I see them—because child abuse prevention for foster…
I often hear the phrase “we’re a trauma-informed organization” in conversations with YSO leaders. It appears on websites, in grant applications, and in parent handbooks. And in most cases, it means that someone on staff attended a workshop, received a certificate, and came back with…
One of my friends had a foster son who once melted down when asked to do the dishes. Not acting out, but a freeze — eyes wide, breathing shallow, body rigid. They had no idea why until months later, when they learned he associated that…