Welcome to QIC-EY

Charged with advancing child welfare programs and practice to ensure that they are authentically engaging and empowering children and youth in child welfare throughout the U.S., especially in relation to permanency decisions.

Imagine

Do you wonder why engaging youth is so important and why you should invest in ensuring that youth have an authentic voice in child welfare? Take a few minutes to listen to Maci Kean, Member, National Youth Engagement Advisory Council to find out why!

Our Four Guiding Principles

In an effort to redefine engagement of children and youth, the Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanence is guided by the four following principles.

#1

Children and youth must be embraced as experts on their own lives, a source of solutions, and as partners in decision-making.

#2

To respect, value, and prioritize the engagement of children and youth, intentional policy, practice, training, evaluation, and infrastructure supporting such engagement is required of both child welfare agencies and courts.

#3

A culture of equity and inclusion must be cultivated to ensure that children and youth of all ages, races, ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual orientations, and gender identities can safely and effectively partner in shared-decision making.

#4

Permanency for children and youth must be legal, relational, and cultural; all three are critical and interconnected.

Professionals might THINK they’re making a good decision for the youth, but it may unintentionally make things worse if they are not listening to the youth’s needs and wants.

I lost about 90% of my rights when I entered the child welfare system. I really was not informed of my rights and had little knowledge of the system or what was taking place. As a result, I was not very engaged.

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Join our mailing list to receive quarterly updates on the QIC-EY including products being released, training opportunities and other information to help inform your work on youth engagement.

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This website is supported by the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) of the United States (U.S.) Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $5,000,000 million with 100 percent funded by ACF/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, ACF/HHS or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit the ACF website, Administrative and National Policy Requirements, at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/administrative-and-national-policy-requirements.

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