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.
I once told one of my foster daughters something my grandmother had told me years earlier. She got quiet for a minute. Then she admitted that it had been so long since she’d seen her own grandmother that she’d forgotten what her face looked like....
Debbie Ausburn · July 23, 2026
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Today is “National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” and a good time to think about what we can teach our kids about work skills. Schools can teach them content, but we may be the only people who can teach them the attitudes and soft skills they need. There are several important steps we can take to let…
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing foster parents is finding help for our kids’ mental health challenges. One study estimates that up to 80% of children in foster care have mental health issues. The American Academy of Pediatrics says, “Mental and behavioral health is the largest unmet health need for children…
Schedules are crowded these days, and most of our kids have their days structured from bedtime to bedtime. It’s easy to forget the power of just hanging out together. I had a strong reminder of that point recently. These days, my husband and I are taking a break from foster care in favor of mentoring young…
A big challenge for many blended families is dealing with toxic biological parents. I didn’t have conflicts with my stepsons’ biological mother, but I had a lot of conflict with my foster children’s parents. I have never had the good fortune of being able to be friends with any of them; I was simply unable to look beyond…
One of the hardest parts of blending families can be getting two sets of children to form a family, or even be willing to try. Few, if any, blended families find themselves in “Brady Bunch” territory. Fortunately, a few important principles can increase our odds of having our kids get along. This week of National…
In my last post, I discussed hope as a way of looking at life, and specifically a trait that we can learn and develop. Today, I want to consider some ways that we can practice that trait, as well as helping our kids be more hopeful…
This week, Passover starts, Christians are looking forward to Easter, and the weather in most places is turning towards spring. It’s a time of hope and looking forward to new beginnings. Hope is essential for people parenting other people’s children. This week I want to think about how to understand and find hope in…
Therapists and other relationship experts talk a lot about the importance of communicating with our kids. Experienced parents who aren’t mental health professionals (like me) agree that open communication is important. It can be very hard to do that, though, particularly when our kids tell us something that we…
One of the most important things we can give our kids is unconditional love. They need to know that, whatever mistakes they make, we still love and care about them. At the same time, we have to establish clear boundaries for them. Knowing how to offer unconditional acceptance while enforcing boundaries for…
This Saturday is Tolkien Reading Day, so it’s time for my annual look at what one of my favorite authors can teach us about raising other people’s children. This year, I’ve been thinking about how to stay optimistic in the face of all of our and our kids’ challenges…
An incredibly frustrating part of parenting children who have suffered trauma is understanding why they do some of the wrong-headed and counterproductive things they do. We work to provide an emotionally safe environment, and then they lie to us. We try…
I know from experience that of the biggest challenges in parenting is knowing how to help a child who suffers from depression. The recent CDC report about our teen mental health crisis shows that more and more us are facing that challenge. Young people who…