YSO Insights serves two audiences with a shared purpose: keeping children safe and helping them thrive. For administrators and staff of youth-serving organizations, that means evidence-based guidance on child protection policy, mandated reporting, screening, and investigations. For Plan B parents — foster, adoptive, kinship, stepparents, and blended families — it means honest, practical guidance from people who have been there. For both, it means evidence-based ideas to encourage resilience and protect futures.
The first weeks of school went fine. Better than fine. Then, somewhere along the way, everything changed. The easygoing kid who did homework without complaint now fights bedtime, melts down over math worksheets, and talks back to the teacher who was “the best” a few...
Debbie Ausburn · September 8, 2026
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One situation that I’m hearing more frequently is foster, adoptive, and stepparents facing false allegations of abuse. It’s a lurking nightmare for every Plan B parent, and sometimes it becomes a reality. These claims, even when untrue, can shake your…
A story from New York City illustrates the sad fact that even good crisis response can have difficult consequences. The reporter starts with the bombshell fact that the health department “received a complaint” about staff abuse of children at a Bright Horizons childcare center. You…
Today is Wrong Way Corrigan Day, and it has a lot of great lessons for those of us Plan B parents trying to weave love, patience, and resilience into our families’ stories. Douglas Corrigan, a 1930s pilot, became famous for flying from New York to…
Today is World Youth Skills Day, and a good time to consider the value of Career and Technical Education (CTE) for our kids. Children who have suffered trauma often face failure and more trauma in traditional classrooms. Not every kid is wired for academics, and…
The reports about a district attorney’s recent press conference in Massachusetts contain some important lessons for youth-serving organizations. The DA in Pittsfield, MA has charged two middle school educators with involuntary manslaughter and related crimes after the 2024 drowning death of a young teen during…
The first step in crafting solid child protection policies is knowing the standards in your field. We lawyers call it the “standard of care,” a term that means the policies and procedures that youth-serving organizations (YSOs) similar to yours follow in your area. Camping programs,…
Anyone who spends enough time looking at the effects of trauma on child development easily could conclude that our children are doomed. Current research in child welfare connects trauma to everything from obesity to significant increases in anxiety and depression. Fortunately, there is a growing…
I ran across an interesting review of mental health studies concluding that stories are an excellent way to build resilience in children. I’m a firm believer in the power of stories, and I love research that supports my ideas. This particular review reminds us that storytelling is…
An interesting working paper published recently argues that children suffer far more ill effects from their parents’ divorce than we previously thought. Working papers are not final and not yet peer-reviewed, but are published for discussion and comment. Thus, it’s too early to fully rely…
As we head to the start of summer, many of us are trying to plan a family vacation with foster, adoptive or blended families. Mixing all of the differing ages, expectations, and family relationships can be very challenging. My husband and I love to travel,…
One of the difficulties in fashioning strong child protection policies is that there is little evidence about what actually works. Often, all we can do is reason backward from incidents, hoping that closing a loophole that a particular abuser exploited will prevent abuse in the…
In working with kids who have suffered trauma, there are several important principles we need to keep in mind. One critical point we need to understand is that childhood trauma does cause major problems, but it doesn’t have to…