California Senator Leland Yee is sponsoring a bill that would help support foster youth who are parents in the state. The bill would help foster youth raising children with resources to help them stay in school, provide needed parenting and child care. In the Pleasanton Weekly, Leland states that "parenting and pregnant youth are 200% [...]
Among the losses that youth in foster care experience are those that most of us take for granted. For example, baby photos. Schools and even work places often have planned activities that ask people to bring in baby photos. Sometimes it's for a "guessing game" and sometimes just to share your early life. For youth [...]
A wonderful resource for those interested in youth aging out of the foster care system, the documentary From Place to Place follows two young adults, Mandy and Raif, as they share their lives and travel to Washington DC to advocate for system change. View the trailer: Their story is also documented in this article featured [...]
Lucinda Jesson, Commissioner of Minnesota Department of Human Services, appeared on KARE-11 to encourage people to consider adopting African American youth in foster care in Minnesota. Commissioner Jesson spoke of meeting one youth who, at age 17, was adopted. Commissioner Jesson also encouraged anyone interested in learning more about adoption to visit the mnadopt.org website. [...]
Prevention Action, an online news publication on issues related to improving child development and health around the world, published an article, "Stressed welfare systems impede evidence-based support for foster children" last week. According to the article, a collaborative effort by rsearchers in the US and UK found that while several strong evidence-based interventions have been [...]
[Photo by Catherine Green for LA Weekly] The LA Weekly published a story last Thursday about the story of one young man struggling to find his way after aging out of the system, and a family that has informally offered resources and support. This story deftly describes the many ways in which young adults aging [...]
An interesting story came out earlier in the week about using social media sites such as Facebook to connect foster youth with relatives. We typically hear stories about the problems associated with social media use among foster youth. In this story however, it is not a foster youth - or a biological parent - that [...]
Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) along with bipartisan support from fellow members of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth Reps. Tom Marino (R-PA), Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) saw their bill aimed at improving educational outcomes of youth in foster care pass both the House and Senate on January 1, 3013. The members of [...]