The Fostering Change Campaign calls for help to respond to the upcoming provincial Budget 2020 consultation. The consultation will take place in June this year, three months earlier than previous years. Fostering Change is mobilizing speakers across the province to share the call for better supports for youth leaving care. MORE
800 copies of “We Are Everywhere”, a community engaged book featuring 10 Vancouver area adults formerly in government care, will be distributed to the youth in care community. The Housing Matters Media Project is trying to gather as many letters as possible by Friday, May 31st so that they are MORE
Dylan Cohen, Fostering Change Campaign Organizer, worked with Spotlight: Child Welfare to discuss the best practices for journalists interviewing youth, parents and others with lived experience in the child welfare system. He developed tip sheets drawing on existing literature, his own experiences with media, and interviews with youth and parents MORE
The Canadian Mental Health Association of BC released a paper that aims to further explore how BC can better support youth in and from care, with a specific lens on their mental health and well-being. It explores the current context of foster care in BC, the mental health and substance MORE
The BC Federation of Foster Parents Associations has a number of bursaries specifically for youth in and from care. The JCW Excellence in Writing Grant is for $2000 for youth who have been in care who intend to further their education in the field of writing. The General Scholarship Fund MORE
The Federation of BC Youth in Care Networks announced two opportunities for young people in and from care. The Dream Fund has two bursaries available. The Education Achievement Bursary are for youth in and from care attending post-secondary school. The Reach for Success Bursary helps young people achieve their goals MORE
Fostering Change is hiring a second Campaign Organizer to be part of a dynamic campaign that supports a BC child welfare advocacy movement that is youth-driven and focused on improving government policies that affect youth in and from care. Experience in care is an asset, and we also value other work and MORE
McCreary Centre has launched another group of dates for webinars presentations on their 2018 BC Adolescent Health Survey. To join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone, please click here. To join the meeting via phone, please dial: +1 (647) 497-9372, Access Code: 514-881-813. Webinar presentations will take place on: May MORE
The Fostering Change Community Organizers are organizing Aging Out of Care – Listening to Understand to hear from former youth in care about their journeys through the system. In coming weeks, they will announce five panelists. Until then, secure your spot for what will be a powerful panel and meaningful stories – MORE
The Connecting Community to Surrey Youth Aging Out of Care project brings you the Plenty of Threads program that connects the education and employment community to youth from care. Youth in or from care aged 19-27 are invited to attend and have one-one-one coffee meetings with folks working in jobs, education programs MORE
CBC Early Edition: Is 12 too young to work? Youth advocacy group pushing for changes to B.C.’s labour laws CBC News: Is 12 too young to work? Youth advocates slam B.C.’s lax child-labour laws Prince George Matters: City to study what poverty looks like in Prince George Burnaby Now: Good Girls Don’t celebrates kids MORE
The Fostering Change Campaign recently released new advocacy resources on their website. The resources include guides and manuals on Agreements with Youth Adults and research comparisons and reports. In late 2018, they submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for policy manuals that social workers refer to regularly, called the Aboriginal Policy MORE
McCreary Centre Society released the 2018 BC Adolescent Health Survey. The Survey is the most reliable, comprehensive survey of youth aged 12–19 in British Columbia. The survey was first conducted in 1992 and has been completed every five years since. In 2018, over 38,000 young people aged 12–19 in 58 of MORE
Spotlight: Child Welfare is a collaborative journalism project that aims to deepen and improve reporting on B.C.’s child welfare system. Their goals are to produce in-depth, nuanced, data-driven and solutions‑oriented reporting about B.C.’s child‑welfare system, and to develop a model for collaborative journalism projects that folks can use in other regions MORE
The big news for families with children is that starting in October 2020 a new B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit will replace the Early Childhood Tax benefit. In our annual Child Poverty Report Card we have been calling for improvements to this benefit for years. BC is the only province MORE