Five Core Strategies
The strategies described below were designed to create the critical conditions in a community that are necessary to improve systems and outcomes for young people in transition. Because engaging young people and creating effective youth–adult partnerships are critical to improving results, each strategy includes an activity specifically designed to authentically engage youth and young adults. The Initiative’s demonstration sites have found that when young people have been adequately supported and genuinely engaged in making decisions about the direction of the work, they have helped to produce some of the most powerful improvements in practice and policy.
Youth Engagement: Preparing young people to be meaningfully involved as decision makers and advocates
Partnerships and Resources: Connecting to resources of public and private systems and philanthropy, expanding and deepening community support, and cultivating community champions for young people transitioning from care.
Research, Evaluation, and Communications: Involving key stakeholders in the use of data to drive decision making and communications and to document results.
Public Will and Policy: Advancing policies and practices that improve outcomes for young people transitioning from foster care.
Increased Opportunities: Creating an array of opportunities and helping young people gain entry to them.
Savings and assets are key ingredients to success in society. Young people aging out of foster care often do not have the typical developmental experience of learning how to manage money and may leave care without even the basic financial and asset development skills that enable people to achieve economic success.
The Opportunity Passport™ is a package of resources that helps young people make a successful transition to adulthood. This package includes:
- financial literacy training,
- a matched savings account, and
- a personal bank account.
Financial literacy training provides basic information to help young people understand financial institutions and money management. It provides a good foundation for young people and introduces them to the potential of a matched savings account. A matched savings account or Individual Development Account (IDA) helps the account holder establish a pattern of regular savings and accumulate assets. Approved assets related to education, vehicles, housing, investments, microenterprises, and health care can be matched dollar for dollar at an amount up to $1,000 per year that is based on the participant’s savings. The personal bank account provides the account holder with a card for depositing cash for immediate use as well as a safe and accessible entrée into the mainstream-banking world.
