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Resource: National Foster Care Month Promotes Positive Connections Between Fathers and Their Children
This blog post discusses how improved connections with a father or father figure can be a critical protective factor for youth in foster care that yields positive outcomes and help prevent homelessness and encounters with law enforcement.
Share with Youth: Foster Care Transition Toolkit
This toolkit (PDF, 66 pages) includes tips and resources to help current and former foster youth as they transition to adulthood and pursue college and career opportunities. It provides information on important topics like finding a job, managing money, and securing housing.
Resource: Health-Care Coverage for Youth in Foster Care and Beyond
This issue brief reviews the eligibility pathways for youth in foster care to receive Medicaid or other health-care coverage. It also examines some of the newer benefits now mandated through the Affordable Care Act, especially those for older youth in, or formerly in, foster care.
Resource: Running Away from Foster Care
This article highlights a literature review that analyzed the research on prevalence, risk factors, and outcomes of running away from foster care, as well as the interventions implemented to stop it from happening.
Resource: Non-Regulatory Guidance: Ensuring Educational Stability for Children in Foster Care
This guidance (PDF, 28 pages) provides information to states, school districts, and child welfare agencies on new provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act for supporting children and youth in foster care.
Upcoming Event: November is National Adoption Month
This observance aims to increase national awareness of the need for permanent families for children and youth in the foster care system. This year’s theme, “We Never Outgrow the Need for Family—Just Ask Us,” reflects a focus on the importance of identifying permanent families for the thousands of 15- to 18-year-olds in foster care who are currently less likely to be adopted or who may age out of the system without a stable home. A new tip sheet, Talking with Older Youth About Adoption (PDF, 2 pages) provides child welfare professionals with a framework for how to talk with older youth about permanency and includes suggestions for how to make these conversations more effective.
Resource: Engaging Youth in Foster Care
This podcast shares the perspective of a youth formerly in foster care. It provides tips to caseworkers for engaging youth in developing their case plans and identifying supportive adults in their lives. This resource can help caseworkers as they work with youth who are in foster care or preparing to transition to adulthood.
Share with Youth: Being an Engaged and Involved Teen in Foster Care
This webpage provides information to teens in foster care about their permanency options, tools to help them transition to adulthood, and how to find support from other teens who have been in foster care.
Report: Predictive Analytics in Child Welfare: An Assessment of Current Efforts, Challenges and Opportunities
This environmental scan, developed by the MITRE Corporation, explores how child welfare agencies currently use predictive analytics in their work. It describes several agencies’ motivations for using predictive analytics, how their models support casework practice, and the challenges encountered.
Report: Psychotropic Medication Use among Children Who Are Subjects of Child Protective Services Investigations: Does Court Oversight Matter?
This brief examines courts’ roles in overseeing psychotropic medication prescriptions for children who were the subjects of child maltreatment investigations. It also explores the relationship between oversight roles, rates of psychotropic medication use, and rates at which children were re-reported to child protection agencies.
Report: Patterns of Foster Care Placement and Family Reunification following Child Maltreatment Investigations
This brief identifies characteristics of children and families who reunified with parents or family following the child’s stay in foster care, patterns regarding success or failure of reunification, and maltreatment re-reports among children reunified with their families.
Share with Youth: Youth Speak Out: Shared Experiences Help Rural Youth Leaders Connect
This podcast, developed by the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, features rural youth leaders who were once homeless or in foster care offering advice on how to engage vulnerable rural youth.
PSA Series, “Firsts”
This series of public service announcements (PSAs), launched by ACF, AdoptUSKids, and the Ad Council, highlights the importance of adopting teens from foster care and emphasizes the many “firsts” families experience when adopting a teen from foster care. Potential adoptive parents can learn about the experience of adoption and find resources about the adoption process.
Youth Leadership Toolkit: Member Outreach
Pamphlet discussing how to strengthen and build organizations through effective youth outreach.
Youth Leadership Toolkit: Branding and Logos
Branding is an important aspect of marketing and creating a positive image for your group. This section provides useful tips for building your brand including creating logos, selecting tag lines, use of color, and advertising.
Youth Leadership Toolkit: Travel Guide
The Travel Guide includes everything you need to know about travel, from packing and flying, to spending money and earning credit. The guide contains travel tips, packing lists, and more.
John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood
The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (the Chafee program) provides funding to support youth/ young adults in or formerly in foster care in their transition to adulthood. The program is funded through formula grants awarded to child welfare agencies in States (including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and participating Tribes. Chafee funds are used to assist youth/ young adults in a wide variety of areas designed to support a successful transition to adulthood. Activities and programs include, but are not limited to, help with education, employment, financial management, housing, emotional support and assured connections to caring adults. Specific services and supports are determined by the child welfare agency, vary by State, locality and agency, and are often based on the individual needs of the young person. Many State or local agencies contract with private organizations to deliver services to young people.
A Toolkit for Working With Children of Incarcerated Parents
Created jointly by the Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR) within the State of Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), Health and Recovery Services Administration and DSHS' Office of Planning, Performance and Accountability, and featured on the Children's Bureau website, this web-based training toolkit provides practitioners with the skills required to respond to the needs of children of parents who are in prison or have an incarceration history.
Children in Foster Care with Parents in Federal Prison: A Toolkit for Child Welfare Agencies, Federal Prisons, and Residential Reentry Centers
Roughly 10% of incarcerated mothers in state prison have a child in a foster home or other state care. Some estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 8 children who are subjects of reports of maltreatment and investigated by child welfare agencies have parents who were recently arrested. Though there is clearly overlap between the prison system and the child welfare system, it is often difficult for prison officials to know how to help incarcerated parents stay in touch with their children in foster care and work towards reunification. Similarly, it is difficult for child welfare agencies to know how to engage parents in prison. The purpose of this toolkit is to help facilitate communication and cooperation between child welfare agencies and federal prisons so that parents can stay engaged in their children's lives.
Children of Incarcerated Parents – Fact Sheet
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2007, an estimated 1.7 million children under the age of 18 had a parent in prison, an increase of almost 80 percent since 1991. The negative consequences for children with an incarcerated parent can be substantial, including financial instability, changes in family structure, shame, and social stigma. However, research also shows that supporting healthy and positive relationships between these vulnerable children, who are the innocent bystanders of adult decisions, and their families has the potential to mitigate negative outcomes.
An interagency group, that includes the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Agriculture as well as the Social Security Administration, has partnered with stakeholders both inside and outside of government to identify opportunities to support these children and their caregivers. This fact sheet describes the efforts of the interagency group.
Effects of Parental Incarceration on Young Children
As part of their project, From Prison to Home: The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families and Communities, The Department of Health and Human Services funded a comprehensive brief, Effects of Parental Incarceration on Young Children that addresses the reactions of chldren with incarcerated parents, as well as: ways of modifying those effects, programs that can help both the parent and the child, how to adopt a whole family approach and why this discussion should inform research and policy issues.
Different topics are accessible through the table of contents here:
- Scope of the Problem
- The Impact of Incarceration on Children
- Short-term Effects
- Long-term Effects
- Modifiers of Children’s Reactions to Incarceration
- Programs for Incarcerated Parents
- Beyond the Incarcerated Parent: The Family Unit as a Target of Intervention
- Visitation Programs
- Co-detention: Raising Children in Prison
- Alternatives to Incarceration
- Programs for Children of Incarcerated Parents
- Parental Re-entry: The Implication for Children
- Problems Associated with Intervention and Evaluation Efforts
- Theoretical Perspectives to Guide Research and Policy
- Research and Policy Issues: A Look Ahead
The Adoption and Safe Families Act: Barriers to Reunification between Children and Incarcerated Parents
This information packet, developed by the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections and featured on the Children's Bureau website, addresses how certain provisions of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) create barriers to reunification for incarcerated mothers. The packet also includes information about amendments that some states have made to ASFA to address these issues, best practice tips for working with children of incarcerated parents, and other related resources
The Antisocial Behavior of the Adolescent Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Developmental Perspective
The Antisocial Behavior of the Adolescent Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Developmental Perspective, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, discusses the link between parent incarceration and antisocial behavior in adolescents, how it develops overtime, why this issue is important to address, and how to address it.
Different sections are accessible through the table of contents here:
- The Significance of Antisocial Behavior during Adolescence
- Linking Parent Criminality and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior
- A Life Course Model of Antisocial Behavior
- Prison, Parenting, and Change
- Interventions that May Make a Difference in the Lives of the Adolescent Children of Incarcerated Parents
- Discussion
- References
Tips for Parents, Teachers, and Other Caregivers for Talking with Children Who Have Experienced Traumatic Events
This presentation, developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, discusses typical responses that children and youth of specific ages may display after experiencing a traumatic event, as well as how parents, caregivers, and teachers can support recovery for young people of all ages.
When a Parent Is Incarcerated
Developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and featured on the Children's Bureau's website, this guide provides information to public child welfare agencies and caseworkers on working with incarcerated parents and their children. Goals of the primer include familiarizing child welfare professionals with the impact of incarceration and providing information to child welfare and correctional systems to help improve permanency outcomes for children.