The Strength of Our Stories as the Key to Child Welfare Reform

Posted by Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute on August 21, 2017

To Be Healthy, Youth Need Access to Quality Care

Unlocking Potential: The Strength of Our Stories as the Key to Child Welfare Reform was released in July 2017. It is the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute 2017 Foster Youth Internship Program Report and contains 12 recommendations for reforming the child welfare system. The 12 recommendations are excellent and present policy responses that reflect the insight and experiences of youth who have been in foster care. Because of the continued activity around the federal health care law—and its importance to the health and well-being of current and former youth in foster care—we wanted to provide a special highlight on Justin Abbasi’s recommendation related to access to behavioral health services and the Chronicle’s commentary.

Meeting a young person’s health and behavioral health needs is foundational to a successful transition to adulthood. If these needs are not met, it is hard to meet other goals like working, going to school, and taking care of family. Making sure these needs are adequately addressed is a significant foster care and aging out issue because of the large numbers of youth in foster care who do have behavioral health challenges and have been exposed to trauma. For example, research shows that more than half of youth in foster care have significant behavioral health needs or developmental delays.

Read more >>
http://jlc.org/blog/making-truly-healthy-transition-adulthood-relies-strong-medicaid-program-and-our-commitment-enh

Full report >>
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ccai/2017_Foster_Youth_Internship_Program%C2%AE_Report.pdf