Monthly Archives: December 2011

Building Community During the Holidays

The holidays can be a particularly difficult time without a family to celebrate with. But Larkin Street Youth Services and community members in San Francisco helped make this festive season a little warmer.

FMC attended an annual holiday party for former foster youth living in transitional housing supported by Larkin Street Youth Services, an organization that supplies housing for 3,100 youth in San Francisco who are or are at risk of being homeless. Because of a generous donation, this year was the first time the party was able to be held in a large and central location much easier … Read more

The Other One Percent: Foster Youth and the Occupy Movement

Crystal Lowry attended 21 schools between the seven years she spent in foster care, yet after emancipation she completed college and graduate school. Now an Education and Employment Specialist at First Place for Youth, a residential facility for foster youth in Oakland, her professional experience as well as her past drew her to participate in Occupy Oakland and raise her voice for America’s other one percent–foster youth. Below she shares her experience with the Occupy movement, reasons why so many foster youth have difficulty finding employment, and how both the top one percent and the other one percent can … Read more

Former CCAI Foster Youth Intern Shares Experience

The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute hosts a yearly summer internship program in DC for college students who have been in foster care to advocate on the federal level for other foster youth. Ashley McCullough, a graduate of Stanford University and advocate for foster youth in Northern California, shares her experience as a CCAI intern and why she valued meeting other former foster youth who were “making it.”

1. Why did you participate in the CCAI Internship?

My social worker told me about the program after she received an email. I thought it was great and totally unheard of. Who … Read more

Rundown of Recent National Convening on Education and Foster Care

The National Working Group on Foster Care and Education put together a summary of last month’s convening entitled Child Welfare, Education and the Courts: A Collaboration to Strengthen Educational Successes of Children and Youth in Foster Care. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, the two-day event brought together teams from the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico to identify strengths and challenges in achieving educational success for youth in foster care. Teams were called on to create action plans, listen to presentations from current and former foster … Read more

Former Foster Youth Shares How Trauma Treatment Helped in the Classroom

Maurissa Sorensen, a former foster youth from California now studying at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, says the treatment she received to help overcome the trauma  she experienced as a child was integral in her academic success, a finding that many child welfare workers and experts associate with success for many foster youth. Here Sorensen explains her experience in the Project Six Residential Facility and shares a video about the life path this service has helped her tread.

In my early teens I was placed in a residential facility called the Project Six, which was housed under the … Read more