The FosterClub All-Stars Leadership Academy is a partnership between PSU’s School of Social Work (Regional Research Institute for Human Services/The Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services) and FosterClub, the national network for young people in foster care.

The All-Star Summer Internship Program was founded on the belief that young people who have successfully transitioned from foster care to responsible young adulthood are best suited to impact the transition of their younger peers. Over the years, FosterClub has been providing a way for young leaders to reach out to other youth through Teen Conferences.

Every summer, 10-15 young people who spent their formative years in foster care are chosen as FosterClub All-Stars. They are provided with intensive leadership and public speaking training, and then dispatched in teams to Teen Conferences and foster care-related events across the country. In addition to participating in dozens of youth events across the country over the summer, the FosterClub All-Stars advocate for system improvement and promote public awareness nationally throughout the year.

We have the unique opportunity to have these All-Stars connected to PSU as part of a unique collaboration. All-Stars, students and faculty are able to share their experiences, expertise and knowledge.

In past years All-Stars have:

Used faculty’s support to create Issue Papers (youth friendly, one-page documents about a topic that is important for youth to understand).
Presented at conferences with and for PSU faculty.
Provided insight to faculty who were writing grants related to youth in foster care
Developed FosterClub publications to be used for outreach and training with youth and social service professionals around the country.

This summer the scope of work was focused upon creating 3 online trainings for supportive adults (targeting foster parents, judges, caseworkers, CASAs, etc.). The topics for these first three trainings were: Mental Health, Education (pre-college), and Relationships and Sexuality. They focus on providing first-hand youth perspective to supportive adults, backed up with field expertise provided by PSU faculty.

PSU faculty:

Provided published data/articles which support training concepts
Supplemented multimedia training format by providing video/audio taped interviews/commentary/testimonies regarding training topics
Aided in material review
Participated in three face-to-face meetings with individual training creation teams (one per month) plus email/conference calls as necessary.

For further information about FosterClub and the All-Star Program, please go to http://www.fosterclub.com.

Links to Foster Club website
http://www.fosterclub.com/
http://allstars.fosterclub.com/

Project dates
Summer 06
Summer 07
Summer 08
Summer 09