National Foster Care Month is a time to acknowledge foster parents and families, child welfare professionals, and other members of the community who help children and youth in foster care find permanent homes and connections. And with nearly 1,700 kids in foster care in Connecticut as of December 2019, we hope these resources prove useful for educators and families alike.

For National Foster Care Month, listen to stories from foster youth and parents themselves:

Congratulations, You’re on Your Own follows young adults as they figure out life after foster care – heading to college, finding housing, or pursuing a passion.

Take a moment to celebrate parents who answer the call to foster and adopt. In this StoryCorps piece, meet ‘Foster Pop’ who has housed more than 50 foster kids in his Brooklyn apartment.

In the Tough Love series, two families describe their experience having children removed from their care, and the work they put in to pull their families back together.

LEARN LOCAL

Each state has different processes and laws about fostering and adopting children. You can find some common myths about the process in Connecticut here.

This resource selection from Teaching Tolerance offers guidance on how teachers can be supportive, stabilizing forces in the lives of children in the foster care system, and even has a toolkit for helping foster youth transition out of high school.