(2008) May is Foster Care Month, and for the 20th anniversary celebration of the campaign, Connect for Kids spoke with Candice Douglass, communications director with Casey Family Programs, to get the latest on foster care and child well-being, and emerging trends we should all know about. We also got the scoop the Kinship Caregiver Support Act currently in Congress and an innovative approach to permanency for teens in a Q&A with Celeste Bodner, executive director of FosterClub, the national network for young people in foster care. Find out what’s new, what’s working, and how you can make a difference no matter how much time you’ve got to give.

This is an updated version of the 2007 Children's Bureau packet; it offers (1) guidance for service providers in exploring protective factors with families, (2) tipsheets in both English and Spanish, (3) ideas for engaging the community in strengthening families and other tools to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Casey Family Services has released a report from the research roundtable held during the last National Convening on Youth Permanence in 2006. The report offers an overview from national experts of how to document and understand youth permanence strategies for children in foster care.

At least one-third of children in foster care have physical or mental disabilities and are at higher risk for poor educational, employment and well-being outcomes. This report from the National Council on Disability finds that federal investments are undercut by lack of coordination across programs and agencies. It offers recommendations for policymakers.

Here's a nonprofit social network (think MySpace or Facebook) for social workers, foster parents and others interested in improving the lives of foster and adoptive youth.

If you work with teens with disabilities, you’ll want to know about the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work (TTW) program. Its Youth Transition portion offers funds for organizations that help students receiving Social Security disability benefits find employment. Is it right for you? Melody Goodspeed, Youth Transition Specialist for TTW answers some common questions about the funding.

Could you have made it entirely on your own at 18 or 21? Each year, roughly 25,000 young people “age out” of the foster care system, many without family or economic supports. Without connection to a caring adult and support to plan and prepare, these youth face steep challenges, including higher rates of unemployment, poor educational attainment, health issues, incarceration, and homelessness. But those are the problems, the statistics—what about the potential of these teens, and their desire to succeed? We spoke with Betsy Krebs, co-director of the New York City-based Youth Advocacy Center, about what works to help teens aging out of foster care succeed. There’s room for the whole community...

I was somewhat surprised when I recently came across the following paragraph on the Voices for America’s Children Website: “As a society we pay a steep price for allowing one in five of our nation’s children to live in poverty. Economists estimate the annual national cost of persistent childhood poverty due to lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and higher health expenditures is massive: approximately $500 billion or four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product”...

In keeping with our promise to track the responses the New York Times had to its “A History of Neglect” series on foster care in New York, we selected a core question from the fourth and final week of responses.

Mississippi plans a serious overhaul of its child welfare system to do more to protect the approximately 3,400 abused and neglected children in its care. Here's an overview of the details of this comprehensive reform plan, developed as a settlement of a class action lawsuit brought against the state by Children's Rights.