Well-Being: An Essential Ingredient for Economic Success

The Youth Transition Funders Group’s Foster Care Work Group released Connectedby 25: A Plan for Investing in the Social, Emotional, and Physical Well-Being of OlderYouth in Foster Care. Recognizing that well-being remains a critical gap in the field of child welfare, and that it’s an issue of particular importance for older youth currently in and transitioning from foster care, they are seeking to leverage and advance new and emerging interest within and outside the federal government and research and advocacy communities to better understand and support social, emotional, and physical well-being for older youth in foster care.  

The Foster Care Work Group’s theory of change is that, if they invest in such a way to improve the social development, mental wellness, and physical health of youth in or transitioning out of foster care, we will see improvements in the other domains of well-being that lead to economic success and safety including education, employment, and housing. Basically, the more a teen has the mental and emotional strength to persevere and successfully navigate the challenges that are being thrown at them, the better off they will be when they are creating a life for themselves as young adults.

Foster care advocates are often leading the overall older youth agenda, pushing the envelope for how our country approaches vulnerable youth.  Raising the age that youth can continue to receive services, introducing the concept of educational continuity, and supporting the transition into college are all ideas that were introduced and piloted by the dynamic foster care advocates and funders. With the introduction of the concept of well-being, we can strengthen our understanding of the common outcomes that drive our work.

We are already seeing seeds of this type of holistic approach to youth as social-emotional learning curriculum makes its way into the classroom.  However, I would caution that the social-emotional learning seems to be much stronger in elementary and middle school – I’m not seeing the same interest in building social-emotional learning in teens whose “behavior problems” are a result of years of trauma. I’m not sure we are seeing this same level of attention to social-emotional or general well-being in juvenile justice. If you are seeing it in your community, please let us know. I think we might have to push really hard to get well-being on to the agenda of the police, courts and juvenile justice system. Who knows, we’ve been able to turn the tide on juvenile justice policies, maybe we can actually get juvenile justice to be a positive force for strengthening the well-being of young people.