Foster Care

The Divine Fire of Youth

As Ysette said, I am very excited to share a few posts while she is enjoying her vacation. I will get to Paul Tough later this week, but wanted to start out with a new release about foster care that has been getting plenty of attention.

I bought Cris Beam’s new book “To the End of June,” last Thursday, right before Labor Day weekend. I was intrigued by the book, partially because I felt like everyone was talking about it. At first I couldn’t quite tell if “everyone” might just include people like me who have google news alerts for New York City foster care. At this point, it seems the book’s publicity has reached well beyond the child welfare world. It is a pleasant change to hear people talking about foster care without an outrageous news story sparking the conversation.

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By ladamski, ago

Lessons from the NYFC Vocational Conference for Youth in Foster Care

Last week I attended the WPTI training for social workers on workforce development. Its objectives were to connect social workers with each other in order to compare the challenges they faced connecting youth to workforce development programs, and for them to learn directly from the staff of those workforce development programs how they can better prepare their young people in care for success in them. My pen was flying almost the entire time as I tried to keep up with the conversation at my table. More on that later, but first:

Two definitions of “workforce development” from the trainer:

  1. Services that help individuals find and retain employment, including training in: job search and placement, soft skills (e.g., punctuality, conflict resolution), and hard skills (e.g., technical skills, welding skills).
  2. The function of assisting individuals, employers, and communities to achieve the occupational competencies necessary for competitive advantage in the marketplace.

I like how the latter doesn’t overload the individual job seeker with all the responsibility for career success. For populations with very specific needs, it is just as important that employers be aware of those needs, and also for the community to do what it can to support its young people.

And now for the meat and potatoes: What are the challenges that you as a social worker face in trying to connect your young people to the workforce? (more…)

By Ysette, ago

How race/ethnicity impacts children in foster care

I’m still making my way through the e-training portion of the Casey Family Program’s Knowing Who You Are curriculum, which is devoted to training social workers and other adults and professionals in the child welfare system in how to nurture the healthy racial/ethnic identities of children in foster care. The section on institutional racism identifies key points in the child welfare process where the cases of children of color seem to be handled differently than those of their white peers. These include investigation, child placement, service provision, and permanency planning. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Surprising(?) correlations between job preparedness, reading ability, employment, and college enrollment for youth in foster care

Young people transitioning out of foster care lag behind their peers nationally on measures of employment and college enrollment.

The National Longitudinal Study of Youth (1997) finds that

  • 41% of 19 year olds are enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges
  • 91% of youth are employed between the ages of 18 and 19

By comparison, a multi-site evaluation of youth transitioning out of foster care finds that

  • 25% of 19 year olds are enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges
  • 75% are employed between the ages of 18 and 19.

In an attempt to establish a relationship between job preparation programs and employment, the Urban Institute recently put out a brief that tackles the question, Do youth in foster care accurately assess their preparation for work? Specifically, Marla McDaniel and Michael Pergamit want to know if the confidence a 17-year old has about her ability to apply, get, and keep a job is a good predictor for whether she will be employed and/or in college by age 19.

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By Ysette, ago