Preconference Institute -
Housing Solutions for Child Welfare
Families and Aging-Out Youth
Sunday, February 22
10:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M.
Presented in Partnership with the National Center for Housing and
Child Welfare
Audience: Senior staff of human service organizations.
Materials: Participants will receive a CD-ROM toolkit on making
the case for and building child welfare-housing partnerships in
order to leverage housing resources for the child welfare system.
Families in the child welfare system face enormous economic
challenges. Child welfare professionals go to great lengths
to remediate these issues and, as a result, most children reunite
safely and successfully with their birth parents. Homeless and
poorly housed parents, however, often remain separated from
their children because they lack a safe place to raise them and
the supportive services necessary to achieve stability in the home.
HUD recently awarded $20 million in new Section 8
Housing Choice Vouchers for the Family Unification Program
(FUP). FUP provides families involved with the child welfare
system with affordable housing and supportive services in order
to safely reunite them with their children. FUP vouchers are
also available to ease the transition to adulthood for youth age
18 or older who left foster care after the age of 16 and are at
risk of homelessness.
Institute participants will gain an understanding of the
pivotal role housing can play in family preservation efforts,
reunification, and successful transition to adulthood among
youth who are aging out. This session will discuss creative
ways to bridge the housing and child welfare systems at the
local level. This institute will include the following:
- Family Unification Program overview
- Instructions for conducting a local housing-child welfare
cost analysis
- Current research
- Innovative partnership models
- Tools and training materials
- CWLA Keeping Families Together and Safe housing-child
welfare cross training curriculum
- Information on housing options for families
- Information on housing options for youth
- Affordable housing policy
- Up-to-date information on relevant federal legislation
The National Center for Housing
and Child Welfare was created last
May to serve as a bridge between
affordable housing resources and
the child welfare system. The center
is dedicated to building the partnerships
necessary to ensure that
children do not enter or linger needlessly
in foster care as a consequence
of their parents' inability to afford
safe, decent, permanent housing.
The center also aims to ensure that
each young person who ages out of the foster care system has
a solid plan for housing stability.
Presenters: Ruth White, MSSA, Executive Director, National Center
for Housing and Child Welfare, University Park, MD; Robert McKay,
Senior Consultant, National Center for Housing and Child Welfare,
Boston, MA; Shalita O'Neale, Executive Director, Maryland Foster
Youth Resource Center, Laurel, MD; John Cheney Egan, Housing
Liaison, Illinois Department of Children and Families, Chicago, IL;
Michael Kelly, Executive Director, District of Columbia Housing
Authority, and President, Council of Large Public Housing Authorities,
Washington, DC; and Betsy Cronin, Director, Supportive Housing
for Families Program, The Connection, Inc., New Haven, CT
Cost: $175 per person. For registration, contact Nicky Dixon at
703/412-2414 or NDixon@CWLA.org.
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