4203 Southpoint Blvd

Jacksonville FL 32216

904-296-1038 fax 904-296-1953

www.nilausa.org June 8, 2005

NILA Update

For those of you who missed the moving documentary Aging Out on PBS, you can visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/agingout/index-hi.html to order a copy. It’s a MUST SEE!

-7612 or visit us information or to request a FREE product catalog1-800-226-7612 or visit us online:

Please help! If you have pictures, stories, RESOURCES, or if you want your agency’s website on NILA’s website, please contact me at mailto:salevy@nilausa.org

Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study –

A new study shows that foster care alumni suffer higher rates of depression, panic disorders, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than their peers. Read more about this and the other interesting findings at http://www.casey.org/Resources/Publications/NorthwestAlumniStudy.htm

Easy to Find Legislative Information

Acting under the directive of the leadership of the 104th Congress to make Federal legislative information freely available to the Internet public, a Library of Congress team brought the THOMAS World Wide Web system online in January 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. Searching capabilities in THOMAS were built on the InQuery information retrieval system, developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval based at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

HOW OFTEN IS THOMAS UPDATED?
As soon as new files are received from the Government Printing Office (GPO), they are indexed and made available for searching. The bill text files are updated several times throughout the day. The Congressional Record files are received once a day, when Congress is in session, usually in the morning. Committee reports arrive intermittently, after they are published by GPO, and are indexed when they arrive.

http://thomas.loc.gov

*** Make sure you have NILAusa.org as a

resource on your agency’s website!!!

FAQ III is here!

The Chafee Foster Care Independence Program and the Chafee Educational and Training Voucher Program – FAQ III is now available at http://www.natl-fostercare.org

Thanks to Chapin Hall for the following:

Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth

2005
Mark E. Courtney, Amy Dworsky, Sherri Terao, Noel Bost, Gretchen Ruth, Tom Keller, Judy Havlicek

Presented here are the first two waves of findings from the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth, a longitudinal study of youth aging out of foster care and transitioning to adulthood in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. The study is based on survey data that will be collected at three points in time from a sample of youth who were in foster care for at least one year prior to their 16th birthday. The majority of these youth were placed in the care of the state child welfare system due to abuse and neglect.

Outcomes at Age 19 is based on survey data collected during follow-up interviews with 603 of the 736 youth from whom baseline data were collected in the first wave. The study compares the outcomes of the 282 young adults who were still in care at age 19 to the outcomes of the 321 who had already been discharged. It also compares the study's sample of young adults to a nationally representative sample of 19-year-olds from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The results suggest that youth making the transition from foster care to young adulthood face a number of significant challenges, including educational deficits, mental health problems, economic insecurity, victimization, and early child-bearing. They fare worse than their same-age peers across a variety of domains and are much more likely to have been involved with the criminal justice system. At the same time, many of the young adults continue to have strong ties to family and perceive relatively high levels of social support. The results also suggest that allowing foster youth to remain in care beyond their 18th birthday may confer some advantages during the transition to adulthood. Those still in care were more likely to have received services to prepare them for independent living, to be continuing their education, and to have access to health and mental health care services. They were also more likely to be working or in school than those no longer in care even after controlling for a variety of factors that might explain this difference.

Conditions of Youth Preparing to Leave State Care presents findings from the first wave of the Midwest Evaluation of Adult Outcomes of Former Foster Youth. The first wave of data pertains to the experiences of youth who are 17 years old and still under the jurisdiction of the state child welfare system. The study found that many foster youth experience mental health and substance abuse problems for which they receive psychological treatment, at three times the rate of a comparable national sample. Similarly, almost one-quarter of foster youth reported having been tested or treated for sexually transmitted diseases, more than four times the proportion reported by the national sample. In addition to health and mental health problems, juvenile justice involvement is also a concern. Nearly two thirds of the males and half of the females had been arrested, convicted of a crime, or sent to a correctional facility. The study also suggests that the odds of completing high school are considerably lower for these foster youth than for a comparable national sample with over half of the sample not yet reading at the 7th grade level. Despite the challenges they face in supporting themselves independently, youth interviewed in the survey maintained a positive attitude toward the child welfare system and reported close relations with members of their families.

For more information, go to www.chapinhall.org

CONGRATULATIONS to Tyler Bacon!!!

Tyler, who lives in Jacksonville, FL and is

a NILA Board Member, was selected

to be a FosterClub All-Star. We’re proud of you!

***To learn more about FosterCLub, a great resource for youth and grownups, visit www.fosterclub.org

Please…PAY YOUR DUES!!!

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National Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child Welfare Services

General Information

HHS-2005-ACF-ACYF-CA-0027

CFDA # - 93.670 -- Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities

Due Date - August 5, 2005

Award Ceiling - $900,000

Description

The purpose of this funding announcement is to award a cooperative agreement for the creation of a national Quality Improvement Center (QIC) focused on identifying effective practices in the privatization of child welfare services. The QIC will assess needs and resources, then plan and implement research and demonstration activities to develop knowledge about improving child welfare services and systems through privatization. The QIC will be awarded funds for a planning period and an implementation phase. During the planning period, the QIC will engage in a collaborative process to review the literature, clarify the focus and refine the implementation plan for the remainder of its child welfare privatization knowledge-building activities. During the implementation phase, the QIC will sponsor (through sub-grants), monitor and evaluate research or demonstration projects that test a variety of privatization models or hypotheses at multiple sites. The QIC will also provide technical assistance to its sub-grantees, funded under this initiative.

Link to Full Announcement

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/open/HHS-2005-ACF-ACYF-CA-0027.html

What’s Happening?

*Look for Growing Pains September 21^st-24^th

*Look for opportunities to advocate!

*Look for success stories!

*Look for other agencies, which could use NILA services!