Fall is my favorite season– it brings crisp cool air, bright colors, and the sounds of children heading off to school for another year. Along with schools and colleges across the country, the University of Pennsylvania, the Field Center’s home, is once again open for in-person learning! It’s exciting to be back on campus, and we welcome our faculty and staff colleagues along with our students, including Nimo Ali, this year's Field Center Lerner Fellow, and Sarah Gzesh, a SP2 PhD student, who you will meet in this edition of the newsletter.

However, this school year “Back to School” is a challenging and even stressful experience for many students, parents, and educators as we try to navigate what is safe and even feasible in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In this month’s newsletter, you’ll find features relating to how individuals, organizations, and policy makers are responding to this unprecedented time with innovative solutions. Penn State’s Fostering Lions Program is one prime example of the kinds of programming colleges and universities around the US are launching to create holistic supports around their students with experience in the foster care system. I’m proud to be part of an exciting collaborative of educators, youth care workers, after school providers, and counselors in the launch of a summer program for over 200 elementary and middle school students in West and Southwest Philadelphia this past summer, to give students a bridge experience to the start of this school year and prepare teachers as well.

Crisis is opportunity if we respond with care and intention in partnership with our communities. Our Field Center colleagues and partners are invested in research and practice that supports resources and opportunity for children, youth and families whose challenges have been deepened further over the last year and a half. We also encourage the open debate about what should be done, with and for whom, to effect positive and sustainable change in the ways our systems operate. As we come back together in person this fall, we hope you will join us in a renewed investment to our common purpose.

Aiming to increase the number of students with foster care experience that attend and complete college, The Field Center supports numerous colleges and universities across Pennsylvania in the development and operation of campus-based support programs. Rapidly growing from four programs in 2016, Pennsylvania now boasts more than 20 higher education institutions that currently have, or have committed to enhance, programming providing financial, academic, social, emotional, logistical, and other types of supports to help students continue their education, including the unique multi-campus model of the Fostering Lions Program (FLP) at Penn State University.

Penn State Abington received training and technical assistance from the Field Center in establishing additional in-house programming. Case Manager Mary Ellen Glick says that the FLP small group gatherings “offer an opportunity to meet and recognize other students on campus who have had similar experiences – this helps to mitigate ‘imposter syndrome’ and build a sense of belonging.”

The Field Center’s Foster Care to College Network allows programs like Fostering Lions to conduct outreach about their programming with professionals and high school students. Following initial training for Campus Support Programs, the Field Center now facilitates a statewide network of supportive colleagues who share information and innovative ideas. McConnell says, “It is good to have a group all working towards the same goals for these youth – you don’t always need to recreate the wheel.”

A full list of Pennsylvania Campus-Based Support Programs is available in the 2021 Campus Programming Directory for Foster Youth.

here.

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Despite decades of efforts to reform the child welfare system in the United States, stakeholders agree that the current model of child protection is not adequately protecting children and supporting families. In recognition of deep racial disparities that exist in many institutions, some scholars and advocates are increasing calls to dismantle these institutions and systems, including child welfare. Emerging as a new term, the idea of a Family Regulation System elevates the concept that the child welfare system is predicated on the subjugation, surveillance, control, and punishment of mostly low-income children and families of color.