VT-FUTRES: Fostering Understanding to Reach Educational Success
Project Description:
Every time a child changes schools they lose approximately six months of educational progress, resulting in a lack of basic academic skills and major disadvantages when transitioning to adulthood. The VT-FUTRES mission is to improve educational stability and academic outcomes of middle and high school youth in foster care in Vermont and serve as a national model.
Our project targets unmet needs for achieving educational stability for middle and high school aged youth in Vermont?s foster care system. First, the promising educational stability outcomes attained in one pilot region need to be achieved statewide through refinement, dissemination, and local implementation of successful strategies. Second, findings from the pilot region and reports from around the state highlight that many stakeholders are not aware of the importance of educational stability for foster youth and do not have resources or capacity to ensure it is part of planning and collaboration. And third, Vermont currently has no systematic mechanism for tracking educational stability data of youth in child welfare.
The core of this grant is the Rock the GRADES toolkit for improving educational stability based on the evidence-informed intervention strategies developed by Joan Rock during the BSC process. This intervention will be refined and tested during the course of this grant.
The key elements of Rock the Grades are:
1. Generate networks in child welfare, educational, court systems and partnering agencies.
2. Recruit foster families in school districts with high rates of foster care placements.
3. Ask foster parents for transportation support to increase educational stability.
4. Data collection and dissemination across disciplines to identify needs and track progress.
5. Educate local communities on importance of educational stability for youth in foster care.
6. Support screening youth in foster care for educational stability and well-being.
Goal 1: Refine and implement the evidence- informed intervention and toolkit Rock the GRADES. Through an iterative process of development, testing, and revision, VT- FUTRES will create the Rock the GRADES intervention and toolkit.
Goal 2. Build local multi-disciplinary capacity to improve educational stability and academic achievement for middle and high school youth in foster care. VT-FUTRES will offer discrete trainings and outreach during the two-year grant that will lay the foundation for sustainable workforce development infrastructure.
Goal 3. Facilitate the cross-system collection and use of data on educational stability and outcomes of youth in foster care. VT-FUTRES will leverage efforts from initiatives in child welfare, education, and courts to build infrastructure capacity for data collection and dissemination.
Goal 4. Engage youth in sharing their experiences to positively influence infrastructure development around educational stability. Create regional youth leadership teams empowered to review local and national work on educational stability and share their educational experiences through outlets such as video and social media.
VT-FUTRES is a collaboration between the University of Vermont Center on Disability & Community Inclusion and Department of Social Work, the Vermont Department of Education (DOE), Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF), the Justice for Children Task Force of Vermont Family Court, and children and families involved with DCF.
Keyword(s):
educational stability, foster care, education
Core Function(s):
Performing Research or Evaluation, Developing & Disseminating Information, Continuing Education/Community Training
Area of Emphasis
Education & Early Intervention
Target Audience:
Professionals and Para-Professionals, Family Members/Caregivers, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN, General Public
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Disadvantaged Circumstances, Other
Primary Target Audience Geographic Descriptor:
State
COVID-19 Related Data:
N/A
