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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Starting tomorrow, the blue pinwheels will return to signal Child Abuse Prevention Month. Organizations share child abuse prevention statistics on social media. Lawmakers proclaim awareness. Schools distribute body safety coloring pages. And across the country, Plan B parents — those of us parenting foster, adoptive,…
I need a glass of water Most would think this is an easy statement with an easy answer. It should be. But, friends, it’s not! Recently I was on a flight to a work meeting. As usual the space was tight, the seats were hard and…
In early March, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued a ruling that youth-serving organizations should note. The case — Darlington School v. Philadelphia Indemnity et al. — reversed a $345 million judgment against five insurance carriers, finding that policies written decades after abuse occurred cannot…
You probably didn’t expect parenting to feel like a siege. You opened your home, your life, and your heart. And then you waited — for connection, for trust, for the moment when something finally shifted. Maybe you’re still waiting to see your kids healing from…
Any time an independent investigation finds wrongdoing, the alleged perpetrator will be upset. They often file lawsuits against the investigator or the youth organization or both. A story about a recent lawsuit from California illustrates the pitfalls of not asking enough questions in an investigation and why…
Let's be honest. Some days our homes feel like a reality TV show nobody asked to audition for. The dog knocks over the laundry. Your child has a meltdown over the color of their cup. You realize — at 7:45 a.m. — that it's…
If you are a Plan B parent, you have probably had a version of this moment: you are watching your child struggle—with trust, with relationships, with behavior that seems to come out of nowhere—and a quiet fear settles in. What if the things that happened…
Every year on March 14th, people around the world observe National Write Your Story Day — a simple invitation to write about what’s on your mind. Founded in 2017, the day is a reminder to Plan B families that helping our children reclaim their stories…
You’ve read through every page of the independent report and appreciate that the investigator identified clear paths forward. But here’s the next difficult question for you: How do you ensure these recommendations become part of your safety culture and don’t simply become another binder on…
Commissioning an independent investigation is a difficult decision for a youth organization, and it is only the beginning of the process. What happens after the report lands on your desk — how you read it, who sees it, what you do with it, and how…
As a full circle foster child, foster care worker and foster/adoptive parent, the life I have had has not been a walk-in-the-park. I lived many days as a child scrounging for food and facing shame in foster homes of other broken caregivers and youth. For…
This Friday, March 6th at sundown, something quiet and countercultural is happening around the world. Families, communities, and schools are powering down their devices for 24 hours as part of the Global Day of Unplugging — a worldwide movement that's been growing since 2009. The…