Worth Our Care Symposium on Youth Transitioning to Adulthood

The two VISTA workers, and Ken from the Runaway and Homeless Youth Program transitional living program and I attended the Worth Our Care symposium on Tuesday, February 24 at the Mariott in Charleston. This all day event focused on how we, as a state, and in the community, can help young people, particularly those in the foster care, juvenile and adolescent mental health service systems, make a successful transition to adulthood. There were short presentations throughout the day on such topics as post secondary education issues for aging out foster youth, particularly needs of adolescents from a adolescent psychiatrists perspective, a judge talked about children's issues from his perspective, and a presenter on advocating and lobbying about issues on children. There was a panel at the end that included topics such as Chafee services, a pilot project for transitioning youth. This was a good overview about the topic, and leads us, as we returned to the local community, to want to work even harder to develop supports and services for youth in transition within our community, among our programs.