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.
Summer co-parenting is one of those topics that exposes the gap between how blended and foster families look from the outside and what they actually require on a Wednesday in late June. When school is in session, the schedule does most of the work. The...
Debbie Ausburn · May 21, 2026
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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…
Mother’s Day is a complicated one. I am a mother: bio, foster, adoptive. I have an amazing mother…by legal paper. I was birthed by a mother that started with good intentions. I lived in the foster care system with many temporary mothers. I have…
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…
May is National Foster Care Month. For administrators and direct-service staff of youth-serving organizations, it is worth treating this observance as something more than a social media post. It is an invitation to ask a practical question: does your organization understand the foster care experience…
When I was a foster parent, the question of “what comes after high school” sat differently for me and my kids than it did for most of my friends. The assumption in those conversations — that college was the next logical step, the obvious goal…
I have defended many youth organizations in litigation involving harm to children. Let me tell you what the worst moment in a deposition sounds like. The attorney asks: “When did you last read your child safety policy?” Your client pauses. Looks at the ceiling. Says,…
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…
We have exciting news to share. YSO Academy is now an Accredited Provider with the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). IACET accreditation is a milestone we have been working toward for a long time, and we are thrilled to tell you what…
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…
April 23 is Take a Chance Day—a lighthearted observance that celebrates spontaneity, taking risks, and the willingness to try something new. The internet fills with posts about skydiving, asking out a crush, launching a business, or ordering something unfamiliar off a menu. The underlying message:…
National Take a Chance Day, observed every April 23, celebrates stepping outside your comfort zone. Try something new. Take a leap. Embrace the unfamiliar. For most people, the invitation feels exciting, even liberating—a nudge toward the adventures and opportunities that caution has kept at arm’s…