This multi-year initiative examines how foster youth can be supported in ways that advance healthy development and well-being and reduce the impact of negative life experiences.

Not surprisingly, vulnerable youth encounter more challenges to reaching a healthy and satisfying adulthood than their more advantaged counterparts. Exposure to violence and maltreatment, lack of consistent or nurturing relationships and involvement in public systems such as foster care or juvenile justice all entail significant and potentially life-altering impacts on the positive transition to adulthood.

New research suggests that traumatic effects on brain development may play more of a role than previously understood in causing negative outcomes for youth. Established research on how to promote positive youth development and help youth grow into mature, successful adults; combined with insights from emerging research in neuroscience and brain development, provide an opportunity for fresh thinking on improved adult outcomes for at-risk youth. Over the last decade, there has been a growing conviction in communities, child welfare and other child-serving fields as to the importance for practitioners addressing not only risk factors that jeopardize a child’s prospects for a secure life (for example, family violence) but also protective factors (for example, good pre-natal health) that round out the intervention picture.

Youth Thrive has two goals:

1. To give child welfare agencies and their partners a way to translate the federal mandate for child well-being into actions that will secure the healthy development of youth in foster care. CSSP has examined the research knowledge-base to identify protective and promotive factors that build healthy development and well-being for youth as they move through adolescence into adulthood. The synthesis of the research and the Youth Thrive Protective and Promotive Factors Framework will be shared with the field, and hopefully used to fashion policies, programs and interventions that promote health and well-being. CSSP anticipates creating tools and trainings for practitioners working with at-risk youth,parents, foster parents and relatives caring for youth, group homes and other facilities and child welfare agencies.
2. To disseminate this information to parents, caregivers, families and communities so that they will better understand how they - in their respective roles - can prioritize healthy development for young people to grow into successful, productive and caring members of society.  

CSSP believes Youth Thrive will help yield a greater alignment of knowledge, principles of support and policy and practice in the field. Ultimately, the hope is that the developmental needs of young people involved in the child welfare system will be better attended to, and that these youth will receive the supports and experiences necessary to ensure enhanced opportunities for productive and secure lives.

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