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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The invitation arrives as a one-line email: IEP meeting next Tuesday. By the time you walk in, six adults will already be sitting at that table. You’ll probably see a special education teacher, a general education teacher, a school psychologist, an administrator, and maybe a…
A South Carolina church now faces four criminal defendants and four civil lawsuits, all traced back to a volunteer with a criminal history. The details of that case matter less than the pattern behind it. Most of the failures that lawyers and sources allege in recent…
Our free training webinar on September 29, “You Understand the Trauma. Now What?,” isn’t just theory. You’ll leave with four specific things to try that same night, including one simple shift in how you talk to your child mid-meltdown that changes how fast they calm…
I said yes to fostering before I understood what I was agreeing to. The hard decision, I thought, was the one I made that first day, the paperwork, the training, the home study. I assumed that once I said yes, the deciding part was over…
Every August, as new volunteers sign up for the school year, someone on staff asks the same question. How thorough should this person’s background check be? The instinct is to answer by job title, treating “volunteer” as one category and “staff” as another. That instinct…
Mark your calendar for September 29. We’re hosting a free webinar called, “You Understand the Trauma. Now What?” It’s for foster, adoptive, kinship, and stepparents. You already understand why your child struggles. This training covers what to do about it in the moment. Learn more…
Ask any administrator whether their organization keeps records on staff and volunteers, and the answer is almost always yes. Ask that same administrator how quickly the organization can produce every record connected to one specific person, from every system. Their confidence usually drops. The problem…
Kids who come to us from hard places have real reasons for their outbursts. A canceled visit can wreck a morning. A new house rule can trigger a slammed door. We should understand where the behavior comes from. That understanding does not mean we should…
Your organization’s legal exposure does not end with an injury or claim. What your program directors, operations staff, and child safety coordinator say after an incident, in emails, in conversations with parents, in staff meetings, and on social media, can come back as evidence against…
Some Plan B kids started school this week. Some still have a few weeks of summer left. Either way, the shift from summer to school routine may be a challenge for a child who came into your family through loss. The loss may have been…
I stretched uncomfortably, cramped from an uneasy night in the chair next to my foster daughter’s hospital bed. What had started as a stomachache had turned into immediate gallbladder surgery and an overnight stay. Everything seemed to go well, but we were still waiting to…
A Texas school district just finished defending a retaliation claim. It took four years, a CPS investigation, and a trip to the Fifth Circuit for the school system to win. Dr. Johnathan Castille, a special education administrator, reported two teachers in 2021 for allegedly abusing students. He…