Child Welfare Webinar: Maximizing Youth Engagement in Court Reviews and Case Planning

Authen­tic youth engage­ment is crit­i­cal to improv­ing out­comes for young peo­ple tran­si­tion­ing from fos­ter care to adult­hood. This point recent­ly was empha­sized in Max­i­miz­ing Youth Engage­ment in Court Reviews and Case Plan­ning, a webi­nar host­ed by the Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Initiative.

The webi­nar, fourth in a six-part series, explains that the fed­er­al Strength­en­ing Fam­i­lies Act (SFA) cre­at­ed new require­ments in child wel­fare to enhance youth engage­ment in case plan­ning and court reviews. Led by a court facil­i­ta­tor, a for­mer judge, peer advo­cates and a child wel­fare pro­gram direc­tor, the ses­sion explored authen­tic youth engage­ment and exam­ined Tennessee’s Extend­ed Fos­ter Care Review Board Pro­gram. Atten­dees learned about the most effec­tive aspects of the pro­gram and how to repli­cate it in local jurisdictions.

View Max­i­miz­ing Youth Engage­ment

The next webi­nar, Improv­ing Per­ma­nen­cy Out­comes for Old­er Youth, is sched­uled for 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST, Tues­day, August 9, 2016. It will show how devel­op­ing nor­mal­cy and youth engage­ment pro­grams can aid in imple­men­ta­tion of the SFA’s per­ma­nen­cy provisions.

Reg­is­ter for the August 9 webinar

The three pre­vi­ous webi­na­rs in the series include:

• Cre­at­ing Effec­tive Nor­mal­cy Poli­cies, 
• Effec­tive Court Over­sight to Sup­port and Enforce Nor­mal­cy and Youth Engage­ment, and
• Keep­ing Sys­tems Account­able in the Imple­men­ta­tion of the SFA. 

Relat­ed publication

In addition to the webi­na­rs, the Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive released a report, ​“What Young Peo­ple Need To Thrive: Lever­ag­ing the Strength­en­ing Fam­i­lies Act To Pro­mote Nor­mal­cy,” high­light­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from young peo­ple in fos­ter care for imple­ment­ing the Strength­en­ing Fam­i­lies Act.