About the Youth Transition Action Team Initiative

The Youth Transition Action Team Initiative (YTAT) was an effort launched in the summer of 2004 to address the issue of transition for youth aging out of foster care by working with California County Child Welfare Agencies engaged in system improvement activities. Since that summer, Casey Family Programs and other partners such as the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Jewish Community Foundation, and the California Department of Social Services, have invested in the initiative.

The initiative focused on:

• Raising the importance of employment preparation within the Child Welfare system
• Creating and expanding local multi-disciplinary teams (known as YTATs). Youth Transition Action Teams are county-based teams of leaders from child welfare, education, workforce development, social services, philanthropy, and other systems are leveraging local resources and programs to provide an integrated continuum of services and opportunities for current and former foster youth as they seek to make the transition to life on their own, and
• Developing tools and resources for communities to use to better prepare foster youth for sustained employment.

As a result of the focused efforts in California, YTATs have:

• Helped youth-serving systems in California counties change the way they view and work with foster youth.
• Established and increased cross-system collaboration between child welfare, workforce development, social services, education, and/or philanthropy.
• Increased the number of career development and employment preparation experiences available to foster youth.
• Created meaningful ways for youth to participate in shaping their own transition plans, interventions and programs.
• Increased the focus on Foster Youth in the California Youth Workforce System.

What is Next for YTAT?
The Federal government has helped re-focus attention on youth workforce development and the issues of youth transition through the Shared Youth Vision Partnership and a renewed summer jobs program through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Concurrently, new legislation, The Fostering Connections and Early Adoptions Act, provides states the opportunity to extend care to foster youth beyond the age of 18. With this heightened awareness of the plight of transitioning youth paired with the need to provide high quality career development and employment services to youth in transition, the time is right to spread the lessons of YTAT to a wider audience – both in California and around the nation.

Leveraging the work of the YTAT communities with New Ways’ deep experience in developing successful youth employment programs, designing community-wide partnerships that provide expanded opportunities for youth, and applying powerful career development strategies in schools, workplaces, and communities, we will take what we’ve learned through the YTAT initiative and focus our efforts on launching a national Foster Youth Pathways to Employment Initiative.

We continue to seek out new partners to help us share the lessons and impacts of the Youth Transition Action Team initiative, craft new strategies and approaches, and continue to support and share quality practices that meet the developmental needs of youth. We firmly believe that community by community, together we can improve the lives of young people is foster care, and ensure their successful transition to a happy and productive adult life.

For more information contact: cmouille@newwaystowork.org