About This Site
Our aim is to coalesce the plethora of resources and rapidly growing body of information around COVID-19 into a curated and situational framework to help youth easily identify what to know and how to take action based on the scenario(s) in which they are finding themselves.
A team of community responders with lived experience in foster care works to synthesize and write content in response to these scenarios based on questions and inquiries received from current and former foster youth across the nation via different channels (town halls, consultations with youth, direct emails, survey forms, social media comments, research from organizations like The Field Center at the University of Pennsylvania and Foster Club, and other youth stories).
For example, in one of the town halls for older foster youth organized in collaboration with the Children's Bureau, we collected and analyzed over 2,000 questions submitted by youth, to respond to their most pressing concerns. Here's what was on their minds:
And these are some of the powerful questions that young people asked:
Our aim is to work with child welfare staff in states across the nation to identify processes and policies that have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and find examples of instances where they have been updated or adapted which can be replicated by the broader community.
When Think of Us is presented with a new question, it first reaches out to states across the country to see if anyone else has answered this question or addressed this issue, with agencies and states pro-bono to trouble-shoot moderate technical problems, such as how to effectively communicate with older foster youth, before sharing policy guidance and language with all stakeholders.
Think of Us also coordinates a Working Group between key stakeholders in child welfare, formed specifically to answer and address novel questions that have not been answered yet. This Working Group meets regularly and is on-standby to address novel issues as they emerge.
The information and materials on this web site are intended for informational purposes only and are not intended to be treated as legal advice.
Last modified 2yr ago