Prospective foster and adoptive parents are welcome at any Open House listed on our website. Please call one of the regional coordinators listed at the bottom of this newsletter or

for more information or to schedule an individual appointment.

 Click here for the most current listing of open houses across the state.

 Click on the calendar at right to see FAM events. 

Check out all the great information we've been posting on Facebook recently!

•  Raising Foster: Many foster parents as well as some pre-adoptive parents will experience the pain and grief of having a child they grew to love return to their bio family. This blog will resonate with you.
• OP-ED National Human Trafficking Awareness Day:  As a follow-up to yesterday's post....
  Did you know that: "...one of the biggest days for traffickers [is]: Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 2. Hundreds of thousands of visitors will descend on New Jersey, many of them not only to watch the game, but to have sex with a minor. Pimps from all over the world will fly and drive in their trafficking victims to feed this cycle."
• CT Voices for Children 3rd Annual Youth at the Capitol Day: Raising the Grade: Definitely worth watching! Today, local and national leaders and advocates as well as CT youth shared their stories about how foster care impacted children and youths ability to receive a quality education responsive to their needs.
• Missouri State Advertising Class Marketing Campaign Helps Foster Children: We need this to happen in CT! Anyone know of a marketing professor at a CT college or university they can pass this on to?
• Going Full Circle to Work From Strengths: Learn more about the Wilderness School and it's Director who started by attending as a student in 1975.     

For those parenting older youth, finding good resources can be a challenge.  Getting your youth to utilize them is yet another challenge at times.

Below you will find some useful website links and descriptions. We'd love to hear back from you which, if any, you and your youth found interesting and/or useful.

•  Youthhood.org:  This site requires youth to register to use the tools on the site which include information about hygiene, eating disorders, sexuality, disability rights and much more.   
• Represent Magazine:  This site is written by and for youth in care.  Winners of many awards over the years, Represent offers the youth perspective on many topics including LGBTQ issues, sex and pregnancy, mental health, aging out and birth family.
• Foster Club: Another written by and for youth site, Foster Club offers a national network for youth in foster care.  resources include scholarship information; a teen speakers' bureau available for conferences; message boards; and biographies of famous people who were in foster care.
• Foster Youth Money Guides: Developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, these free downloadable tools are for both caregivers and youth.  They help educate youth about personal finance.    
• V Street: A subscription-based site that offers life-skills curricula for youth developed keeping in mind the nine domains the Ansell-Casey Life Skills Assessment requires.  A single subscription (one youth) costs $24 a year.  Discounts appear to be available for multiple registrations. 
• Foster Care Alumni of America: A completely volunteer-led and driven national organization that offers support groups and other opportunities for youth to make connections that can continue long past the time they age out.  The oldest active alumni member of FCAA is in his eighties!
• National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections: is a training, technical assistance and information services organization.  The site is rich with resources for both caregivers, social workers and youth.  We've linked you directly to the Fostering Connections page which lists many of the resources for families and youth.  
• Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative: This site offers a substantial array of resources for caregivers and professionals including adolescent brain development, finances and information on engaging youth in their planning and transition, and recruitment.
• Foster Focus Magazine: Written by a foster care alumni, this award-winning magazine focuses on a different topic every month and always includes the voices of former foster youth.  Past issues have focused on human trafficking, mental health diagnoses; foster care and Black History Month; the effect of foster care on bio children and much, much more.