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For Youth

Your thoughts and feelings matter. Your voice is needed. The more professionals engage young people like you, the better things will be. The resources below identify some of the main ways you can get involved in the system.

Ways Youth Can Impact the Child Welfare System:

1. Decision-making/case planning for your own life

Audio Described Version
"Young Adult, Formerly in Foster Care: Having the Right People Ask the Right Questions" 

• Foster Youth Deserve the Right to Speak for Themselves in Court
• Let's Talk! My Path to My Future.
• "Youth Empowerment Card: Youth Rights in PA Courts"

2. Sharing your story with other youth in foster care, professionals, or the general public

• Depression in My Eyes: This I Believe
• Strategic Sharing

• A Guide for Youth Understanding Trauma

3. Cofacilitating trainings for professionals and/or foster and adoptive parents

• Family Matters: Supporting Connections to Birth Parents
• The Wounded Spirit: Grief and Loss in Foster Care

4. Being invited to participate in a speaking engagement or media campaign to increase awareness about foster care

• AdoptUSKids Speaker’s Bureau
• State Youth Advocacy/Advisory Boards & Foster Care Alumni Associations

5. Joining a youth advisory board or work group to make recommendations about policy and practices

• Foster Youth in Action
• Youth Advocate to Advocate for Youth: The Next Transition

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