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By The Imprint Staff Reporters, Photo: Unsplash, The Imprint, January 11, 2022 A new study of young people who have been in foster care and are enrolled at community colleges in Illinois paints a dismal picture of their educational success, and researchers said they would expect similar results if studies were conducted in other states. Released Monday by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, the study said such youths typically struggled in high school, leaving them ill-prepared for...

By Paul S. Dilorenzo, Photo: Unsplash, The Imprint, January 3, 2022 I'm not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They’re more of a sugar high than an actual meal. I favor the twelve step practice of daily introspection and ongoing self-reflection. It’s more realistic, longer lasting and helps us to understand the complexity of the tasks involved with real change. That’s because continuous examination requires us to ask: how I am being called to improve and to reflect on my decisions?

By Alex Boyd, Photo: Liam Richards/The Canadian Press, The Star, January 4, 2022 Visitors have come from Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba. A biker group cruised all the way from Edmonton. Grandmothers brought their own chairs so they could sit and stay awhile. In the six months since Cowessess First Nation announced the discovery of 751 unmarked graves, the site has become an informal gathering place for community members and strangers alike who come to pay their respects to the people...

Intro to Trauma Informed Care is for YOU! Designed to help you implement a trauma-informed approach throughout your organization, this live webinar provides an introductory understanding, and will equip you with tools you can use right away.

By Catherine Porter and Vjosa Isai, The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2022 The government agreed to a landmark settlement to repair the system and compensate those families harmed by it. It potentially ends many years of litigation. The Canadian government announced Tuesday that it had reached what it called the largest settlement in Canada’s history, paying $31.5 billion to fix the nation’s discriminatory child welfare system and compensate the Indigenous people harmed by it. The agreement in...

By Jane Coaston, title image by Alex Merto, The New York Times, December 18, 2021 In 2006, 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel was murdered by his foster parents near Cincinnati. They left him in a second-floor closet in August wrapped in tape and a blanket in a playpen with no food or water while they went out of town to a family reunion, dog in tow. When they returned home, they took his body to an abandoned chimney, doused it in gasoline and burned it, throwing most of the remains into the Ohio...

This Toolkit from Child Trends is for child welfare staff, supervisors, and administrators who work with and on behalf of children, youth, and families who experience a natural disaster. The information and resources in the Toolkit provide evidence- and trauma-informed guidance for promoting positive outcomes for children and youth who experience natural disasters. Click here to access the toolkit.

This upEND publication by Victoria Copeland and Maya Pendleton, who helmed the Repeal Mandatory Reporting Laws panel during the 2021 How We endUP convening, discusses how the monitoring and subsequent criminalization of Black communities have expanded from the criminal punishment system to social services, education, medical systems, and the family policing system. For more information, read Surveillance of Black Families in the Family Policing System .

By Sara Tiano, Illustration: Christine Ongjoco, The Imprint, December 7, 2021 A s more than 1,000 young adults in Los Angeles are set to age out of foster care on New Year’s Eve, county leaders are scrambling to find them all stable homes. The youth raised in government care who are set to lose basic needs benefits had been granted a reprieve during the pandemic. They turned 21, but did not have to leave the program known as “extended foster care” that provides housing and other government...

An issue brief from Ithaka S+R, Homeless and Foster Youth, Racial Inequity, and Policy Shifts for Systemic Change , highlights the racial disparities inherent in foster care and homelessness and the causes of homelessness and foster system involvement. It illustrates the challenges that youth experiencing foster care and homelessness face in earning a college degree and proposes policy changes for states to address and meet the needs of these youth. There is a disproportionate number of...

A factsheet from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) focuses on the role that child welfare professionals play in prevention, intervention, and service provision with regard to child sex trafficking. Children and youth involved with child welfare have a higher risk of being victims of sex trafficking, and one in six of the children reported missing to NCMEC were likely victims of sex trafficking. It is important that child welfare professionals be properly equipped...

By Barbara Tatem Kelley and Paul A. Haskins, National Institute of Justice Journal, August 10, 2021 Youth who have experienced both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems have complex needs that require collaborative, multipronged interventions. In a perfect world, a push of a button would connect all juvenile court judges and authorized staff to relevant local child welfare files for each young person summoned before the court. The imperfect reality is that in many American juvenile...