Download or read book Youth Leaving Foster Care written by Wendy B. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year more than 25,000 youth age out of the American foster care system to face uncertain futures as young adults. Many of them have experienced the trauma of abuse, neglect, disrupted family relationships, and multiple foster care placements. The past two decades have seen increased funding and services in a society-wide attempt to mitigate the effects of such childhood adversity, but a consistent pattern of loss and broken attachments adds up. Development and education are severely compromised. A quarter of youth experience homelessness after exiting care; 25-50% will not complete high school, and only 3-6% will graduate college. Four years after leaving care, less than half are employed, and their earnings remain well below the poverty line. Rates of mental health disorders, early pregnancy and parenthood, and involvement in the criminal justice system are all heightened. Youth Leaving Foster Care is the first comprehensive text to focus on youth emerging from care, offering a new theoretical framework to guide programs, policies, and services. The book argues that understanding infant, child, and adolescent development; attachment experiences and disruptions; and the impacts of unresolved trauma and loss on development are critical to improving long-term outcomes. It provides an overview of the foster care context, detailed discussion of the effects of maltreatment on development from infancy through young adulthood, and common mental health problems and treatment recommendations. It includes a discussion of delinquency and the juvenile justice system, as well as issues facing pregnant and parenting youth, LGBT youth, and youth with disabilities. Presenting the best practices in transitional living programs and policy and research recommendations, this crucial guide also reviews and summarizes the latest research, which are enhanced with illustrative case vignettes. Each mental health and program chapter concludes with key practice principles reflecting the relationship-based approach. Presenting a multidimensional, integrated perspective that gives greater consideration to psychological and interpersonal needs, this vital guide offers an approach that will strengthen the capacity of youth leaving care to transition into successful adult lives.
Download or read book Youth Leaving Foster Care written by Wendy B. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive text to focus on youth emerging from care, offering a new theoretical framework to guide students, practitioners, administrators, and policymakers. The book features case vignettes, recommendations for practice and programs, and a multidimensional, integrative perspective on the effects of maltreatment on development, and common mental health disorders and treatment.
Download or read book On Their Own written by Martha Shirk and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2006-08-08 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, as many as 25,000 teenagers "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn eighteen. For years, a government agency had made every important decision for them. Suddenly, they are on their own, with no one to count on. What does it mean to be eighteen and on your own, without the family support and personal connections that most young people rely on? For many youth raised in foster care, it means largely unhappy endings, including sudden homelessness, unemployment, dead-end jobs, loneliness, and despair. On Their Own tells the compelling stories of ten young people whose lives are full of promise, but who face economic and social barriers stemming from the disruptions of foster care. This book calls for action to provide youth in foster care the same opportunities on the road to adulthood that most of our youth take for granted-access to higher education, vocational training, medical care, housing, and relationships within their communities. On Their Own is meant to serve as a clarion call not only to policymakers, but to all Americans who care about the futures of our young people.
Download or read book Youth Transitioning from Foster Care written by Adrienne L. Fernandes and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly half of states have laws that explicitly permit the state child welfare system to continue providing foster care for children beyond the age of majority (usually no later than 19). However, the number of states that actually facilitate youth remaining in care beyond their 18th or 19th birthdays is significantly smaller. Over 20,000 young people have been emancipated from foster care annually from FY2002 through FY2006. While most young people have access to emotional and financial support systems throughout their early adult years, older youth in care and those who age out of care often face obstacles to developing independent living skills and building supports that ease the transition to adulthood. Older foster youth who return to their parents or guardians may continue to experience poor family dynamics or a lack of emotional and financial supports, and studies have shown that recently emancipated foster youth fare poorly relative to their counterparts in the general population on several outcome measures. Recognising the difficulties faced by older youth in care and youth emancipating from foster care, Congress created a new Independent Living initiative (P.L. 99-272)in 1986 to assist certain older foster youth as they enter adulthood. The legislation authorised mandatory funding to states under a new Section 477 of the Social Security Act. In 1999, the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Act (P.L. 106-169) replaced the Independent Living Program with the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (CFCIP) and doubled the total annual funds available to states from $70 million to $140 million. The law also expanded the population of youth eligible to receive independent living services - with no lower age limit - and gave states greater flexibility in designing independent living programs. Independent living services can refer to assistance in obtaining a high school diploma, training in daily living skills, and training in financial management, among other services. Amendments to the CFCIP in FY2002 (P.L. 107-133) authorised discretionary funding for states to provide education and training vouchers to eligible youth. Along with the CFCIP, federal child welfare law and other federal programs are intended to help older current youth in care and foster care alumni make the transition to adulthood. The federal foster care program has protections in place to ensure that older youth in care have a written case plan that addresses the programs and services that will assist in this transition, among other supports. Further, federal law authorises funding for states to provide workforce assistance and housing to older foster youth. Despite these efforts and the resilience displayed by current and former foster youth, policymakers and child welfare practitioners have suggested that at a minimum, young people need better support to build stronger connections with caring adults before leaving foster care and should have the option to remain in care upon reaching their 18th or 19th birthdays.
Download or read book Challenges Confronting Older Children Leaving Foster Care written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Human Resources and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Life after Foster Care written by Loring Paul Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book apprises readers of the present conditions of former and emancipated foster youth, provides evidence-based best practices regarding their experiences, and proposes new policies for ensuring better outcomes for these children upon discharge from foster care. For most American youth, the transition to adulthood is gradual and aided by support from parents and others. In contrast, foster youth are expected to arrive at self-sufficiency abruptly and without the same level of support. Such an expectation may be due in part to what Loring Paul Jones has found in his research: that many of the studies conducted thus far have been fragmented and incomplete, often focusing on a particular state or agency that may follow policies not applicable nationwide. This book connects the dots between these disparate studies to provide child welfare practitioners, policy makers, and students with a broader picture of the state of American youth following discharge from foster care. It examines not only child welfare policies but also related policies in areas such as housing and education that may contribute to the success or failure of foster youth in society. It additionally draws lessons from successful programs to provide readers with the tools needed to develop foster and after-care systems that more closely mirror the support afforded to youth in the general population.
Download or read book Children who Age Out of the Foster Care System written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Transition written by Center for an Urban Future and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Emancipating from the Care of Strangers written by John Seita and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleven mini-memoirs of foster care alumni who share their experiences, insights and recommendations about how to prepare youth to successfully transition from foster care to independent living.
Download or read book Aging Out of the Foster System written by Miranda Mosier-Puentes and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades of demographic studies and applied efforts have convinced scholars, students, and social workers that young people coming of age and transitioning out of the foster care system face great challenges in health, education, income, and general well-being. Despite the wealth of research on these outcomes, we know much less about the lived experiences of young people leaving foster care. Aging Out of the Foster System: Youths' Perspectives adds to this narrative the personal experiences of young people who are aging out or have aged out of their child welfare placement. The authors center the stories of these young people and apply critical ethnographic methods to frame their accounts with attention to the encounters within which they were produced, including power imbalances, institutional contexts, and relational dynamics. By centering the experiences of youths in these contexts and attending to the larger forces at work, this book helps connect the dots between youth aging out of the foster care system, social workers in Independent Living Programs, and the professors and scholars teaching the next generations of professionals working to support the aging out process.
Download or read book Foster Youth Transitions to Adulthood written by Mark E. Courtney and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book No Way to Treat a Child written by Naomi Schaefer Riley and published by Bombardier Books. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kids in danger are treated instrumentally to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe—all with the inevitable result that their most precious developmental years are lost in bureaucratic and judicial red tape. It is time to stop letting efforts to fix the child welfare system get derailed by activists who are concerned with race-matching, blood ties, and the abstract demands of social justice, and start asking the most important question: Where are the emotionally and financially stable, loving, and permanent homes where these kids can thrive? “Naomi Riley’s book reveals the extent to which abused and abandoned children are often injured by their government rescuers. It is a must-read for those seeking solutions to this national crisis.” —Robert L. Woodson, Sr., civil rights leader and president of the Woodson Center “Everyone interested in child welfare should grapple with Naomi Riley’s powerful evidence that the current system ill-serves the safety and well-being of vulnerable kids.” —Walter Olson, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies
Download or read book It s Okay to Wonder written by Rhonda Wagner and published by Joy of Avery. This book was released on 2019-08-03 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm excited to be a sister in our foster family, but I'm worried about new rules. I feel happy and sad at the same time. What about when our help isn't needed anymore?" It's Okay to Wonder is a story about Avery, a loquacious girl whose parents have decided to become foster parents. While Mom and Dad attend another foster training class, Avery shares with her Nana and Pop about her mixed-up feelings. She and her grandparents learn together what it might be like to become a foster family--that it's okay to feel two emotions at the same time and that it's okay to wonder! The Joy of Avery series offers resources for foster care families and brings the world of foster care to life by exploring Avery's feelings as her family welcomes foster children into their home. It's Okay to Wonder is the first book in the series.
Download or read book Beyond The Foster Care System written by Betsy Krebs and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year tens of thousands of teenagers are released from the foster care system in the United States without high school degrees, homes, or strong family relationships. Two to four years after discharge, half of these young people still do not have either a high school diploma or equivalency degree, and fewer than ten percent enter college. Nearly a third end up on public assistance within fifteen months, and eventually more than a third will be arrested or convicted of a crime. In this richly detailed and often surprising exploration of the foster care system, Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff argue that the existing foster care system sets teens up to fail by inadequately preparing them for adult life. They contend that the primary goal of foster care for teenagers should be preparation for a fully productive adult life, and that current policies and practice are misguided. The authors draw on their fifteen years of experience working with teens and the foster care system to introduce new ways to empower teens to be responsible for themselves and to identify and develop their potential. They also explore what sorts of resources-legal, financial, and human-will need to come from inside and outside the system to ensure that more teens reach successful independence. Ultimately, Krebs and Pitcoff argue that change must include the participation of caring communities of volunteers who want to see disadvantaged youth succeed, as well as the use of creative approaches such as the Socratic Method to help teens to take control of their lives. Bringing together a series of inspiring, real-life accounts, Beyond the Foster Care System introduces readers to a number of dynamic young people who have participated in the Youth Advocacy Center's programs. Their stories demonstrate that alternatives to the standard way of providing foster care are not only imaginable, but possible. With the practical improvements Krebs and Pitcoff outline, teens can learn the skills of effective self-advocacy, become better prepared for the transition to independence, and avoid becoming the statistics that foster care has so often produced in the past.
Download or read book Achieving Permanence for Older Children and Youth in Foster Care written by Benjamin Kerman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-18 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a novel integration of child welfare data, policy analysis, and evidence-informed youth permanency practice, the essays in this volume show how to achieve and sustain family permanence for older children and youth in foster care. Researchers examine what is known about permanency outcomes for youth in foster care, how the existing knowledge base can be applied to improve these outcomes, and the directions that future research should take to strengthen youth permanence practice and policy. Part 1 examines child welfare data concerning reunification, adoption, and relative custody and guardianship and the implications for practice and policy. Part 2 addresses law, regulation, court reform, and resource allocation as vital components in achieving and sustaining family permanence. Contributors examine the impact of policy change created by court reform and propose new federal and state policy directions. Part 3 outlines a range of practices designed to achieve family permanence for youth in foster care: preserving families through community-based services, reunification, adoption, and custody and guardianship arrangements with relatives. As growing numbers of youth continue to "age out" of foster care without permanent families, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have increasingly focused on developing evidence-informed policies, practices, services and supports to improve outcomes for youth. Edited by leading professionals in the field, this text recommends the most relevant and effective methods for improving family permanency outcomes for older youth in foster care.
Download or read book Hawaii s Young People written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 1238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
