Authors
Ja'Chelle Ball, Elizabeth Jordan, and Amy McKlindon contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order.
Child welfare agencies play a central role in the lives and outcomes of youth who are in foster care. Agency structures and policies influence where a foster youth lives, what services they qualify for, how often they can see their parents or siblings, and the educational opportunities they receive. The role of the child welfare agencies also echoes in the lives and circumstances of their families, foster parents, and kinship caregivers—and for the practitioners who provide support.
The voices of youth and families, combined with robust research findings, tell us that youth with foster care experience face barriers and challenges that their peers do not, both during and after their time in foster care. There is ample evidence showing that youth with foster care experience have lower educational, employment, health, and housing outcomes as a result of these and other barriers. Due to the role of child welfare agencies in the lives of youth in foster care, changes to the policies that dictate agency practices and procedures are necessary to improve those outcomes and set youth up to thrive in adulthood.
Advocates play a key role in driving change and holding agencies accountable by educating policymakers, system leaders, and the public about challenges, barriers, and opportunities for improvement. Advocacy does not begin or end with educating policymakers or launching a public campaign. Rather, advocates do substantial work to understand existing problems, define a policy solution, and ensure that the policy operates in the intended way to directly improve the lives of youth and their families.
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, as part of its overarching Foster Youth Initiative, has invested in advocacy for over 14 years across a portfolio of grantees to drive child welfare improvements for foster youth in Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, and nationally. There are many ways that grantees have approached their advocacy work to make positive changes and directly address the needs of youth, families, and the practitioners who serve them. Child Trends has served as the Initiative’s evaluation partner since 2018.
In this brief, we organize the examples identified through our evaluation of the Initiative into five categories of advocacy wins commonly achieved by grantees:
- Meeting the needs of youth by establishing new programs and services
- Providing continuity and new opportunities for young people by preserving or expanding programs
- Opening the door for more youth and caregivers to receive services by leveraging federal resources
- Ensuring youth receive the benefits created by policies through enhanced implementation
- Grounding coalitions in the voices and direct needs of youth and caregivers
These categories are often interconnected—for example, a coalition may support advocacy for a new program and, once that program is created, shift toward supporting implementation.
This brief describes each advocacy category and showcases an example from the Initiative's portfolio, drawing on interviews with the grantees and a document review. Each example highlights the need that the policy aims to address, the strategies used to educate decision makers and address the need, and the direct outcomes of the shift that occurred. The brief also provides a short overview of other examples within each category, although it does not describe all the accomplishments of the Initiative's advocacy grantees. Each of these efforts was accomplished in collaboration, drawing on the support of multiple partners and funders who were integral to this work.
Suggested citation: Ball, J., Jordan, E., McKlindon, A., Ibarra, I., Naylon, K., & Scott, A. (2026). Propelling improvements for youth with foster care experience through advocacy. Child Trends. DOI: 10.56417/7497h7059o