Youth aging out of Texas foster care will soon have a direct line to help navigate workforce programs, education, housing, and other services — staffed by people who’ve been through the system themselves.
The Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing at The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work received $4 million from the Texas Workforce Commission to establish the Texas Foster Youth Network. The centralized call center will launch within the next year.
To ensure the Texas Foster Youth Network meets the needs of youth, young adults who lived in foster care will play a critical role in its development. The Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing will hire young adults with experience in foster care to guide a landscape analysis, inform an outreach plan, and develop operations policies during the first year of the project. The planning process will also explore how to incorporate AI into the call center, with current foster youth helping identify the best practices.
“By centering lived experiences in our advisory groups and staffing, the Texas Foster Youth Network will develop a relevant and accessible resource for foster youth to access vital services in education, employment, housing, and more,” said Monica Faulkner, director of the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing. “We know through our prior research that youth want reliable relationships with adults and that human interaction is critical, but we also see potential to incorporate AI into our services. Youth will lead us in planning the best ways to do that.”
Establishing the Texas Foster Youth Network at UT Austin enables it to draw on the expertise of staff at the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing and the School of Social Work.
“Our school has a long history of working with the state to improve child well-being in Texas,” said Allan Cole, dean of the School of Social Work. “The Texas Foster Youth Network is the next step in our commitment to helping youth transition from foster care toward thriving adulthood.”
Read the full news release on the UT News website.