In Depth

”Check with us about things.  Remember the motto, ‘Nothing About Me Without Me!’  Don’t make choices for us or make fun of us.  Know that we have thoughts, feelings, and ideas just like you.”

 – Sara Erstad-Landis, “What I Would Like to Say to Lawyers,” Youth Law News, January-February, 1999. 

Child welfare professionals historically made all decisions about foster youth's futures. Today, the role of young people is being redefined - not as passive recipients of agency decisions, but as active participants in their own permanency planning and decision making.

Why Involve Young People?

There are many benefits:

• Youth have their own ideas about permanence; they also can identify family members, friends, or other adults who are important to them and may become part of a permanency team.
• Youth involvement can be therapeutic. Participating in permanency planning gives a young person more of a stake in its success. It also can prepare him or her for the transition to a new family or living situation.
• Team members hear directly about a youth's real needs - family permanence, education, employment, health, housing, and other supports - and can make realistic, comprehensive plans to meet those needs.

Teaming Can Set the Stage

One strategy that puts young people squarely in the midst of their own case planning and permanency work is teaming. Teaming for permanence involves youth in a customized planning process; teams include the youth along with professionals and adults the youth identifies as important. The focus of the team: building family and other relationships necessary for the young person to exit foster care and prepare for — and succeed in — adulthood.

Case Planning: How to Involve Young People

In the Maine Division of Casey Family Services, youth engage in planning through their permanency teams. Youth play central roles, working with their social workers to determine:

• permanency team membership beyond the required players, such as the state social worker;
• meeting agendas;
• the introduction of team members, which might include the youth selecting "icebreaker" questions or beginning an initial meeting by explaining the importance of each participant in his or her life; and
• strategies that will help the young person feel comfortable and effective in team meetings. For example, one youth came up with an excellent method to maintain her cool and concentration during team meetings: She asked the social worker to bring her therapy dog, Cricket. Cricket is now an official member of the teen's team.

Other states involved in permanency teaming work include:

The Minnesota Homecoming Project engages youth ages 13 to 17 in identifying and achieving their own permanency outcomes. Youth develop their own recruitment plan for locating adoptive families. In the process, they learn important skills.

The Rhode Island Real Connections program engages youth in family search activities. Real Connections staff support youth in identifying adults from their existing network who have the potential to become positive, lifelong supports. Youth identify not only immediate family members but also extended family and "fictive kin," who could include coaches, teachers, neighbors and others.

Tools for Involving Youth

Following are tools to help social workers, tribal members, and agency staff increase youth involvement in permanency planning. This is a developing list; if you have a tool that works for you, share it with Connections Count.

• Passages: A Journal for Growing Home helps youth explore where they come from, who they are, and where they belong. Working with a "passages partner," an adult with whom the youth has a positive, trusting relationship, the youth explores options and makes choices about the future.
• "Youth Involvement Strategies," a slide presentation on engaging young people in permanency planning, is available from National Resource Center on Permanency Planning and Foster Care.
• Innovative Strategies to Achieve Safety, Permanency, and Well-Being: Maximizing the Involvement of Young People, from the New Mexico Court Improvement Project, provides a multidisciplinary guide to engaging youth in case planning and decision making.
• There's No Place Like Home: A Guide to Permanency Options for Foster Youth offers strategies for engaging youth in permanency planning from the Department of Health and Human Services in Sacramento County, California.