This book considers the impact of digital media and technology on lived experience for young people in foster care. While the extent and intricacies of foster care—known as out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia, where this study takes place—are not widely understood by the general public, youth in care might struggle to construct a personal identity that goes beyond reflecting the stereotypes and stigma by which they are often recognised. In today’s digital environment, media can play a significant role in any individual’s developing sense of self, identity, and belonging. Deitz and Sheridan Burns examine OOHC through the lens of networked media environments and investigate the conditions that encourage belonging and resilience in order to establish the role that digital technology can play in supporting those conditions for individuals, family networks, and the care sector.

Each year, as many as 25,000 teenagers "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn eighteen. For years, a government agency had made every important decision for them. Suddenly, they are on their own, with no one to count on. What does it mean to be eighteen and on your own, without the family support and personal connections that most young people rely on? For many youth raised in foster care, it means largely unhappy endings, including sudden homelessness, unemployment, dead-end jobs, loneliness, and despair. On Their Own tells the compelling stories of ten young people whose lives are full of promise, but who face economic and social barriers stemming from the disruptions of foster care. This book calls for action to provide youth in foster care the same opportunities on the road to adulthood that most of our youth take for granted-access to higher education, vocational training, medical care, housing, and relationships within their communities. On Their Own is meant to serve as a clarion call not only to policymakers, but to all Americans who care about the futures of our young people.

Institutional placements in foster care are out-of-home, non-family placements where some foster youth are sent to live. Each year, of the hundreds of thousands of youth in foster care, over 43,000 live in institutional placements. These placements disproportionately impact Black youth, other youth of color, older youth, and pregnant and parenting teens. Due to calls to reckon with longstanding institutionalized racism, the spread of COVID-19 through institutions, concern over the use of forceful restraints, emerging research on trauma, and the recent death of 16 year-old Cornelius Fredericks in a Michigan group home, there is a growing body of research and a movement calling for the reduction or elimination of institutional placements in foster care. Missing from this conversation was a deep, nuanced understanding of the experiences and mental models of young people who have recently lived in these places. This study exists to fill that gap.

Currently, there are over 400,000 youth living in foster care in the United States, with over 20,000 aging out of the child welfare system each year. Foster youth are more prone to experience short- and long-term adverse developmental outcomes including diminished academic achievement and career opportunities, poor mental and overall health, financial struggles, homelessness, early sexual intercourse, and substance abuse, many of these outcomes are risk factors for involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite their challenges, foster youth have numerous strengths and positive assets that carry them through their journeys, helping them to overcome obstacles and build resilience. The Handbook of Foster Youth brings together a prominent group of multidisciplinary experts to provide nuanced insights on the complex dynamics of the foster care system, its impact on youth’s lives, and the roles of institutions and policies in the foster system. It discusses current gaps and future directions as well as recommendations to advance the field. This book provides an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges and strengths of foster youth and the child welfare system, and the combined efforts of caregivers, community volunteers, policy makers, and the professionals and researchers who work with them.

This important book offers unique insight into the experience of foster youth from 27 countries around the world. It provides a systematic review of literature reporting the experiences of youth in care, addressing a wide range of key topics in this multidisciplinary field, and presenting the views and perceptions of these young people. Including a meta-analysis on contact with birth parents, it examines youth’s experiences of the foster care system; contact and relationships; caregiving and relationships with caregivers; placements; and emotional well-being. These five core themes embrace a wide range of crucial topics including foster youth’s involvement in decisions about themselves; interactions with social workers, birth families, foster families, peers, and friends; the benefits and challenges of foster care; the stigma attached to being in care; mental health, well-being, and belonging; and developing a sense of self. This essential volume is for students and scholars of child and adolescent development, social work, education, sociology, and public health. Illustrated with quotes from former and current foster youth, and with research-based recommendations for best practices in foster care, it is also for professional social workers, psychologists, child advocates, children’s therapists, children’s attorneys, youth workers, and foster parents.

This study explores if valid information can mitigate stereotypes of foster care as reflected in popular media, specifically in the context of the State of Texas. A quasiexperimental, post-test only design assessed the role that media plays in the public’s perception of foster care in the state of Texas. Results indicate that media, in the form of a professional presentation, made statistically significant differences between treatment and control groups in regard to the overall perception and general attitudes towards the foster care system in the State of Texas. Results indicate the need for further research in the area of media’s impact on the public’s perception of foster care.

Examines the plight of minority children taken from inner cities and placed in foster care in rural areas. Based on case studies, interviews, observation, and secondary sources, shows how they become confused and afraid, are subject to traumatic emotional states, and are often diagnosed with emotional problems and put in special education classes because their social skills are different from their country classmates. Revised from a 1996 Ph.D. dissertation for Walden University. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is the first comprehensive text to focus on youth emerging from care, offering a new theoretical framework to guide students, practitioners, administrators, and policymakers. The book features case vignettes, recommendations for practice and programs, and a multidimensional, integrative perspective on the effects of maltreatment on development, and common mental health disorders and treatment.

Reshuffled tells the life stories of former foster children, who despite all odds, craft productive lives. Within Reshuffled, former foster children share their trials and strategies to gain footing in their unpredictable lives with the hope that their stories can model, inspire, and encourage youth facing similar situations today. Tracy Gharbo and Linda Palmer have captured the authentic voices of the abused and abandoned children who become lawyers, social workers, military officers, college graduates, scientists, teachers, parents, athletes, and foster care advocates. Inspiration abounds in unique lives, told honestly and without reserve.