Federal Resources

The USDA/1890 National Scholars Program will provide full tuition, employment, employee benefits, fees, books, use of a laptop, printer, and software while on scholarship and room and board each year for four years to students pursuing a bachelor's degree at 1890 Historically-Black Land Grant Institutions.

Eligibility: Youth aged 16 to 22 who are unable to return to their homes
Focus: Life skills training

Runaway and Homeless Youth Programs that serve transition-age youth include the Transitional Living Program and the Maternity Group Homes Program.

The Transitional Living Program for Older Homeless Youth promotes the independence of youth between 16 and 22 years old who are unable to return to their homes. Grantees provide housing and a range of services, including life skills training, financial literacy instruction, and education and employment services. Youth might live in group homes or in their own apartments, depending on the program and each young person's independent living skills.

The Maternity Group Homes Program, part of the Transitional Living Program, supports homeless pregnant and/or parenting young people between the ages of 16 and 22, as well as their dependent children. Services are provided for up to 21 months.

This article from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth highlights the work of Tulane’s Drop-In Clinic, which provides free medical care to teens in New Orleans. It shares some of the best practices that have helped the clinic successfully reduce barriers and connect youth to care. 

This slideshow presents tips for youth-serving organizations on how they can improve the health of the at-risk youth they work with. Ideas include partnering with local farms to receive fresh vegetables and offering classes for physical and mental health.

This blog post from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth links to multiple resources that can help youth-serving programs understand how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects youth, including homeless and runaway youth. The post also provides some of the highlights from a recent webinar that discussed what youth and youth workers need to know about the ACA. 

The Department of Health and Human Services’ National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth released this list of recommended resources on sexually transmitted diseases, including information geared specifically to teens and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth.

This interview features Amy Lin of the health advocacy group Young Invincibles discussing her organization’s work to encourage young people to sign up for health insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace. Amy also discusses the challenges that young people, including those who are homeless or teen parents, face in accessing healthcare and how youth-serving professionals can help them overcome these obstacles.

NCFY has compiled a list of resources from federal agencies and nonprofit organizations that can help professionals guide youth and families in obtaining affordable health care through Medicaid or the Health Insurance Marketplace.

Without other trusted adults to guide them, young men in juvenile justice facilities may turn to employees for information about sexual health, a role that these individuals may not be trained to fulfill. To answer this need,  the Washington State Department of Health, through the State Personal Responsibility Education Program, provided training to juvenile justice staff to deliver evidence-based sexual health curricula to youth.

This article from the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth provides an overview of recent research on the factors that influence sexually transmitted (STI) infection rates among homeless youth. The article also presents the factors that influence the likelihood these youth will get tested and offers suggestions for potentially effective prevention and intervention efforts to reduce risky sexual behaviors and promote STI testing. 

This Q&A with Joan Tucker, the senior behavioral scientist and professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California, focuses on Dr. Tucker’s work on smoking among homeless youth and her recommendations for what tailored cessation programs might look like. 

This slideshow highlights six free apps that can help youth avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

This slideshow features free apps that can help youth avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. It includes a brief description of each app and a link to where it can be downloaded. 

This article highlights a recent study which examined why teens talk with extended family members about sex and what they discuss. The results indicate that almost 60% of teens in the study talked with extended family members about sex, and youth who said they talked exclusively to extended family members about sex were more than twice as likely to have had sex. 

 “America’s Youth: Transitions to Adulthood,” a report from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), compares the current generation of youth in the United States to youth in 2000, 1990, and 1980.

Youth Indicators is a statistical compilation of data on the distribution of youth, their family structure, economic factors, school and extracurricular activities, health factors, and other elements that constitute the world of young people between the ages of 0-17 years. This report is created and published by Child Stats, a division of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. 

This report illustrates changes in several key characteristics of the teaching force between the 1987-1988 and 2011-2012 school years, including the number of teachers, the level of teaching experience, and the racial/ethnic diversity of the teaching force. The report focuses on how these demographic changes varied across different types of teachers and schools.