This document discusses empowering foster care youth and alumni to build successful lives after aging out of the system. It outlines some of the challenges foster youth face in transitioning to adulthood without family support networks, including lack of stable housing, employment, education and healthcare. It recommends ways for communities to help emancipating foster youth succeed, such as mentoring programs, job training, and clarifying the types of ongoing support adults in their networks can provide. The document also shares recommendations from a local foster youth advisory board on improving outcomes for youth placed in residential facilities.

1. Empowering
foster care
youth and
alumni to
build
successful
lives in young
adulthood
Junior League Meeting, 2014

2. Advocacy Movements
• Civil rights movement
• Women’s suffrage
• Disability rights
• Faith movements
• GLBTQ

3. Collective voices of current and former
foster care youth:

5. Foster Care Alumni of America’s
“Culture of Foster Care”
Postcard Project
Improving Outcomes;
Changing the Odds

6. Life’s Transitions Do
Not Happen Overnight
Recommended Reading: Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s
2012 Foster Youth Internship Report

7. Transition to Young Adulthood for
for a young person with loving,
involved parents

8. Transition to Young Adulthood
for a foster care youth who “ages out”

9. Lack of Family Privilege

10. Point of Transition:
Child and Adult Systems
Disconnection
Child Mental Health
Mental Health
Child Welfare
Special Education
Juvenile Justice Criminal Justice
Food Stamps
Workforce
Housing

11. Empowering Youth
to Plan for the Future

12. Essential Elements:

13. How the local community can help
emancipating foster youth
succeed
Foster Care Alumni of America’s
“Culture of Foster Care”
Postcard Project

14. Practical Needs:
- Annual FCAA Ohio Regional Thanksgivings
- Pay It Forward: Baby Clothing Program
- Raffle Prizes for joint Ohio Reach and
Connecting the Dots conference
- Suits for Success
- Serving as a mentor

15. Copyright Lisa Dickson
Adding to a young person’s
Circle of Support:

16. What exactly
can I rely on you for?
It is critical to the youth’s success to identify those adults
who will continue to provide various supports through and
beyond the transition from care.
Clarifying exactly what the various supports will include
can help to avoid gaps in the youth’s safety net and
misunderstandings between the youth and the supportive
adult(s).
• A home for the holidays
• A place to do laundry
• An emergency place to stay
• Care packages while in college
• Storage
• Someone to discuss problems with
• A phone or computer to use

17. Youth in Residential Placements
Recommendations from the Franklin County YAB:
• Staff at residential facilities should be trauma-
informed, and skilled to assist youth in dealing with
their triggers.
• Youth who are placed in residential facilities should
be informed of their personal rights, and who to
contact if they feel physically unsafe.
• Residential facilities should separate youth who are
suicidal from youth who are physically violent.
• Residential facilities should provide a distinction
between tweens (ages 12-14) with teens (ages 15-
17). Their developmental needs are different.
• Current residential policies be reviewed with input
from current and/or former foster youth, including
their policies on seclusion, staff training and
independent living preparation.