Connections Count

In This Issue:

Making It Possible

How can child welfare better connect young people to family?

Resources and Tools

How to search for family – and why family is so important – is the subject of Iowa’s Completing the Circle: Uncovering, Discovering, and Creating Connections for Your Foster and Adoptive Children.

What’s on the minds of American Indian and Alaska Native youth? Focus groups of youth ages 10 to 17 from 20 tribes offer insights. Findings are now available online.

A rich trove of materials associated with the 2005 federal open adoption demonstration projects – assessment and evaluation tools, training curricula, and more – is now available online.

What creates barriers to adoption? Ruth McRoy’s latest research on the subject is published by the Collaboration to AdoptUsKids. See the report and a related video

A recent study from the Urban Institute says nearly half of kids aging out of care in Los Angeles had at least monthly contact with birth moms and grandparents; more than three quarters had regular contact with siblings.

Youth and Family Perspectives

Because of her permanency pact, Lupe says, she now has the “ability to dream.” Lupe described her need for family to StoryCorps during the 2008 National Convening on Youth Permanence.