Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.
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.
read more >From Innovation to Action
From Inspiration to Action: Teams Plan for Youth Permanence
In the five months since May’s 2008 National Convening on Youth Permanence, counties, states, and tribes have been hard at work elaborating upon, refining, or building consensus for youth permanency plans made at the Convening.
In December and in the months that follow, Connections Count will report on advances in policy and practice in specific locations. In this issue, we set the stage by examining themes that struck a chord with Convening participants in Washington, D.C.
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Using Data to Identify – and Reduce – Barriers to Youth Permanence
The plight of youth aging out of foster care is a top priority for the field of child welfare. Yet, despite increased attention to the issue, more young people are emancipating or running away from care each year – 31,000 in 2006 alone. Young African Americans continue to wait longer for permanent families and are more likely than whites to age out. In some communities, the same is true of Hispanic and American Indian youth. What’s a child welfare system to do?
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Youth Permanence: Making the Case with State Legislators and the Media
Nationally, the news media and politicians are focused on the terrible uncertainty roiling the nation’s economic scene. But when attention shifts to you, your state budget, and your agency’s work, how will you make the case for programs that connect young people in foster care with families?
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Archive
- View Current Issue
- From Innovation to Action
September 2008, Volume 2 - Court Reforms that Support Youth in Achieving Lifelong Families
February-March 2008, Volume 2 - Engaging Youth in Achieving and Sustaining Permanence
November 2007, Volume 1
About Connections Count
Produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Casey Family Services, Connections Count is an electronic newsletter focusing on best practices, tools, research, and data on youth permanence in child welfare.
read more>Contact Us
Casey Family Services
127 Church Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Tel: 203.401.6900
Fax: 203.401.6901