The Job Corps serves youth aging out of foster care with a residential program that provides access to earn a high school diploma or GED, training and preparation for a career, housing, meals, basic health care, and a living allowance twice a month – all at no cost to the student.

The Society for Research in Child Development says we can improve the transition to independent living for foster teens. Measures include revising eligibility requirements so they no longer exclude high-risk populations, strengthening transition services, and allowing states to extend adoption assistance or guardianship payments through age 21 if the adoption or guardianship was arranged before the child’s 16th birthday.

Child welfare experts say the new Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 represents the most significant federal reforms for children in foster care in more than a decade. This guidebook can help ensure full and prompt implementation of the improvements in the new law for children being raised by grandparents and other relatives.

In this October 2008 blog entry, Hershel Sarbin reacts to a recent CFK article on Hope Meadows, an intergenerational community launched in 1993, and how “smartly its founders have adapted to changing conditions over the years.” Therein lies a model for all of us, he says.

Fourteen years ago, an abandoned air force base was transformed into a vibrant intergenerational community, Hope Meadows, to help move children from foster care to adoption and turn seniors into active givers of supports and services. Now, as sites across the country replicate their approach, Hope Meadows is adapting to the new challenges that come with long-term success.

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.

October 2007—Our partner Child Advocacy 360 brings you "Readers' Choice Stories," in which readers vote with their eyes, clicks and emails on the best of Who's Doing What That Works.

When you learn that a teen is in foster care, what is your reaction? Empathy? Curiosity? Apprehension? News stories and popular media portrayals of young people involved with the child welfare system, paired with selective statistics about how this population is faring, can feed apprehension at the expense of a more positive view of the strength that can come from overcoming adversity. La Terra Cole, an intern with Connect For Kids, reflects on some recent "mainstream media" portrayals of foster care.