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The Fall 2001/Winter 2002 issue of AdvoCasey focuses on foster teens in transition. It highlights what communities and child welfare agencies are doing (and not doing) to help them. It includes a fact sheet, case studies, and an interview with Gary Stangler, director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative. Complete listing and access info »

Family permanence can substantially improve the chances for future success of all vulnerable children who come into contact with America's child welfare system. Family permanence ultimately can reduce the numbers of youth who enter care as well as those who "age out" of foster care without a family. Change will require new practices, adequate and fl exible funding, improved incentives for systems and individual families, and redefi ned goals and measures of accountability for policy makers and practitioners. Permanence is both a value and a goal of practice. For youth in state care to become successful and emotionally healthy in adulthood, they must leave the foster care system in a planned manner that connects them to a lifelong family. Complete listing and access info »

This fact sheet highlights statistics regarding older children and youth in the foster care system and what happens when they don't have a family that cares. Complete listing and access info »

In our research for this publication, we identified successful programs, policies, and strategies that have been helping older children find permanent families.We then examined how lessons learned from each effective program or policy change could be distilled into a number of action steps that others might follow. Finally, we created a series of overall recommendations and spelled out how advocates can learn from others to create an integrated system of programs and policies that will help older children and youth find permanent families. Complete listing and access info »

This report describes CPYP's permanency work with several California county child welfare departments. It contains final outcomes for four pilot counties (Alameda, Monterey, San Mateo and Stanislaus) and a progress report on the ten counties that commenced the implementation of the project during the second half of 2005 (Contra Costa, Fresno, Humboldt, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo and Sonoma). Complete listing and access info »

CPYP began permanency work with four pilot California counties (Alameda, Monterey, San Mateo, and Stanislaus) in January 2003. After refining the project based upon lessons learned in these four counties, in early 2006 CPYP began working with ten new counties: Contra Costa, Fresno, Humboldt, Kern, Los Angeles (Metro North Region), Orange, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, and Sonoma (the "project counties"). The information included in this report pertains to the permanency work with these ten project counties throughout 2006, 2007, and early 2008. Complete listing and access info »

This report presents findings and recommendations from the Emancipated Youth Connections Project, a model program designed to seek and sustain permanent lifelong connections for older youth who have already emancipated from foster care without a permanent connection to a caring adult. See "Part 3: Project Results" for project evaluation. Complete listing and access info »

This CPYP publication reports on nine exemplary permanency programs throughout the U.S. and explains the critical elements of such programs. Complete listing and access info »

"What do foster youth think about permanency?" CPYP, in partnership with the California Youth Connection (CYC), held interviews and focus groups with several foster youth to talk about this question. This document explores some of their answers. Complete listing and access info »

Far too many of the young people who age out of foster care in Illinois fare poorly in the labor market during their transition to adulthood. Since the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program was created in 1999, it has been providing states with funds to help foster youth making the transition to adulthood achieve self-sufficiency. A major purpose of the program is to ensure that youth who remain in foster care until age 18 or older "receive the education, training and services necessary to obtain employment." Unfortunately, the limited research that has been done on young adults who "aged out" of foster care has found that their labor market outcomes are generally quite poor. This study describes what Illinois young people told us about their current and prior participation in the labor force, including work-related training or services they received. Throughout the report, we make comparisons between the young people who were under the care and supervision of the juvenile court in Cook County (hereafter referred to as the Cook County sample), and the young people who were under the care and supervision of juvenile courts in other counties (hereafter referred to as the Other Counties sample). Although most had some work experience, they had difficulty staying employed. Moreover, despite the fact that the percentage of young people who were working was greater than the percentage who were not, most of those who were employed were not working at a job that paid a living wage. The Foster Care Independence Act specifically mentions employment-related services and supports as being among the types of assistance that states should use their Chafee funding to provide. At baseline, when these young people were age 17 or 18, only 63 percent reported having received at least one service or support to help prepare them for employment. Unfortunately, the percentage of young people who reported receiving services or supports to prepare them for employment fell over time. Complete listing and access info »