Training Strengthens Opportunities for Youth Participation in System Change

In 2025, child wel­fare lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers in five states sharp­ened their youth engage­ment skills at a series of work­shops pro­vid­ed by the Youth Engage­ment Learn­ing Action Net­work and fund­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The train­ings — offered to Thriv­ing Fam­i­lies, Safer Chil­dren teams in Flori­da, Indi­ana, Ken­tucky, Nebras­ka and Okla­homa — focused on empow­er­ing young peo­ple with child wel­fare expe­ri­ence to take on mean­ing­ful roles in reform­ing the system. 

A Recipe for Suc­cess­ful Youth-Adult Partnerships

Youth engage­ment is not as sim­ple as set­ting extra places at the table for them. Adults in posi­tions of author­i­ty must cre­ate the con­di­tions for young peo­ple to co-design and lead part­ner­ships where shared deci­sion mak­ing influ­ences pol­i­cy and prac­tice, said Sam Gar­man, one of the facil­i­ta­tors of the Youth Engage­ment Learn­ing Action Net­work and senior youth engage­ment con­sul­tant for Cetera, Inc., which is a part­ner of the Casey Foundation. 

“It’s about mak­ing sure the table is ready for them to sit at,” Gar­man said. ​“Sites had to start by rethink­ing what readi­ness looks like. That means adjust­ing meet­ing times to accom­mo­date young people’s sched­ules, sup­port­ing trav­el to and from events and clear­ly explain­ing how deci­sions get made so youth can par­tic­i­pate as full partners.”

To sup­port child wel­fare teams in this work, the Youth Engage­ment Learn­ing Action Net­work devot­ed its first two train­ing ses­sions to strength­en­ing adult readi­ness for part­ner­ship. Par­tic­i­pants explored a field-test­ed frame­work for authen­tic youth engage­ment. They learned about ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment and how oppor­tu­ni­ties to exer­cise lead­er­ship can encour­age heal­ing and growth for youth who have had fos­ter care expe­ri­ence and lit­tle con­trol in deci­sions affect­ing their future. The teams also reflect­ed on how adult behav­iors, meet­ing struc­tures and pow­er dynam­ics can either open doors or unin­ten­tion­al­ly block youth leadership.

The teams learned:

• Most effec­tive solu­tions come from those clos­est to the issues.
• Engage­ment must be mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial — not just about what youth con­tribute, but also how they grow pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly from part­ner­ship experiences.
• Young peo­ple should be treat­ed as full part­ners in shap­ing deci­sions, even when they are not the final deci­sion mak­ers, rather than sim­ply being consulted. 
• Adult part­ners must be will­ing and ready to adapt meet­ing struc­tures, times or ground rules so youth can part­ner and lead.
• Dur­ing ado­les­cence, deci­sion-mak­ing skills are still devel­op­ing. Oppor­tu­ni­ties for pos­i­tive risk-tak­ing — such as pub­lic speak­ing or design­ing a project — can fuel young people’s growth.

Mov­ing From The­o­ry to Action to Last­ing Change

Thriv­ing Fam­i­lies, Safer Chil­dren is a nation­al part­ner­ship devot­ed to help­ing pub­lic agen­cies, com­mu­ni­ty part­ners and cit­i­zens advance local solu­tions for strength­en­ing fam­i­lies. Across 22 sites, part­ners work togeth­er in a range of ways to iden­ti­fy com­mu­ni­ty needs and design or revise resources, poli­cies and prac­tices aimed at keep­ing fam­i­lies togeth­er and pre­vent­ing unnec­es­sary entries into fos­ter care. The plan­ning teams — groups of sys­tem lead­ers, young peo­ple, youth-serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions, prac­ti­tion­ers and fam­i­lies — in five juris­dic­tions ben­e­fit­ed from eight months of coach­ing and a small $5,000 grant for strength­en­ing authen­tic youth engagement. 

Dur­ing the train­ing, teams tack­led a vari­ety of issues spe­cif­ic to their local sites. 

• The Flori­da team iden­ti­fied the need to build their child wel­fare sys­tem and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners’ under­stand­ing of the impor­tance of youth part­ner­ship and respond­ed by deliv­er­ing youth engage­ment train­ing direct­ly and in part­ner­ship with local organizations.wove youth part­ner­ship into their com­mu­ni­ty plan­ning process to ensure that young peo­ple will con­tin­ue to play a part in how their work gets done.
• The Indi­ana team focused on a spe­cif­ic state pol­i­cy and pro­posed changes. By May 2025, their effort cul­mi­nat­ed in state law­mak­ers cre­at­ing, fund­ing and sup­port­ing staffing for a statewide engage­ment ini­tia­tive that will solic­it direct feed­back from youth, fam­i­lies and care­givers about child-serv­ing sys­tems. Youth and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers pro­vid­ing input will be com­pen­sat­ed. The Indi­ana team’s focus on iden­ti­fy­ing and strength­en­ing the con­di­tions need­ed to mean­ing­ful­ly engage young peo­ple proved crit­i­cal in May 2025, when state law­mak­ers cre­at­ed and fund­ed a statewide engage­ment ini­tia­tive, includ­ing staffing, to gath­er direct feed­back from youth, fam­i­lies and care­givers on child-serv­ing sys­tems. With skill build­ing around youth engage­ment already in place, youth and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers will be bet­ter posi­tioned to con­tribute informed per­spec­tives and will be com­pen­sat­ed for their time and expertise.
• The Ken­tucky team worked to build a statewide team of co-design­ers that will keep young peo­ple at the cen­ter of the state’s child wel­fare trans­for­ma­tion efforts.
• The Nebras­ka team tack­led trans­porta­tion chal­lenges — a crit­i­cal bar­ri­er to youth par­tic­i­pa­tion — to ensure that young peo­ple could con­tin­ue to have a voice in their work.
• The Okla­homa team found new ways to ampli­fy youth voic­es by devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools that make it eas­i­er for young peo­ple to share their sto­ries and influ­ence decisions.

“What stood out to me most was how equal it felt to be at the table, because it wasn’t just about giv­ing a stamp of approval,” said Alay­na Leonard, an Indi­ana youth advo­cate and for­mer mem­ber of the Com­mis­sion on Improv­ing the Sta­tus of Chil­dren in Indi­ana. A recent pod­cast from Foun­da­tion-sup­port­ed Com­mu­ni­ty In-Site, high­lights the Indi­ana team’s results in a recent episode. ​“We were work­ing togeth­er to ask and answer the right ques­tions. I’ve loved see­ing the grow­ing sup­port for peo­ple with lived expe­ri­ence to be more civi­cal­ly engaged and, even know­ing that trust-build­ing takes time, it’s been such a pos­i­tive experience.”

Where to Learn More to Improve Youth Engage­ment in Policymaking

Many of the prin­ci­ples of authen­tic youth engage­ment dis­cussed dur­ing the Thriv­ing Fam­i­lies, Safer Chil­dren train­ings are sum­ma­rized in Ele­vat­ing Youth Engage­ment, a free cur­ricu­lum pro­duced by the Casey Foun­da­tion with Cetera, Inc. in 2025.

This cur­ricu­lum is based on more than two decades of lessons devel­oped by the Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive^®. It address­es key top­ics like:

• Why adult lead­ers should under­stand ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment when design­ing youth engage­ment programs.
• How adult allies can help enhance lead­er­ship growth and shared deci­sion mak­ing in youth.
• What youth lead­ers need to know about how child wel­fare poli­cies and prac­tices are shaped.
• How young peo­ple can sup­port their own well-being when sys­tem change work involves shar­ing per­son­al or trau­mat­ic experiences. 

“When they’re mean­ing­ful­ly engaged in shared deci­sion-mak­ing and cre­at­ing solu­tions, the peo­ple most affect­ed by the sys­tem bring cre­ative and bold ideas that work for them and their peers to improve out­comes,” said Leslie Gross, direc­tor of the Foundation’s Fam­i­ly Well-Being Strat­e­gy Group. ​“That’s why we invest­ed in this learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for Thriv­ing Fam­i­lies, Safer Chil­dren — to help sites move from want­i­ng to engage youth to doing it authen­ti­cal­ly and effectively.”

Learn more about ele­vat­ing youth engagement