The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Foster Youth Initiative (Initiative)[1] aims to promote the well-being and future success of young people who have experienced foster care in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, and nationally. As the Initiative’s evaluation partner, Child Trends assesses progress toward the Initiative’s goals and disseminates learnings to inform the work of the Initiative and its partners. As part of the evaluation, Child Trends convenes an Evaluation Advisory Board (Board) comprised of young people with lived experience in foster care from Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York City to play an important role in interpreting findings and developing recommendations for the Initiative.
The 2024 Evaluation Advisory Board members include Daniel Bisuano, Al-Yh Holland, Jamie Kelley, Nilsa Morales, Clarissa Peña, and Tonia Ramsey. The Board is facilitated by two Child Trends interns who also have lived experience in foster care: Lanitta Berry and Alex Guerrero. All Board members and the interns contributed perspectives and insights to this brief.[2] Members remain on the Evaluation Advisory Board for a minimum of one year, attending at least four meetings focused on building community with one another, being introduced to research, interpreting qualitative and quantitative data, and preparing to write briefs. Critically, the Board’s members bring unique perspectives shaped by their personal experiences.
As members of the 2024 Evaluation Advisory Board, we identified mental health as our central concern and interest for 2024-2025. In this brief, we share our interpretation of the barriers to mental health and well-being among youth with foster care experience identified in Child Trends’ evaluation activities, and we propose recommendations to address these challenges. Each section shares our individual voices and reflections on the challenges and opportunities uncovered through Child Trends’ evaluation. Some Board members also chose to share creative contributions in the form of poetry and art, which we include throughout the brief to emphasize our observations. The brief concludes with our recommendations for the Initiative and its partners to ensure that all youth with foster care experience have access to—and choice of—mental health services to support their well-being:
- Expand access to nontraditional mental health services.
- Do not consider mental health in isolation.
- Invest in peer support.
- Invest in high-quality data on mental health.
Footnotes
[1] This section is largely verbatim from the introductory sections of the brief authored by last year’s Advisory Board: https://www.childtrends.org/publications/transitioning-foster-care-lived-experts-recommendations
[2] Alyssa Liehr and Amy McKlindon provided Child Trends staff support throughout the development of this brief.
Suggested Citation
Berry, L., Guerrero, A., Bisuano, D., and Kelley, J. (2025). Young people with lived experience in foster care recommend improvements to mental health supports. Child Trends: DOI: 10.56417/8560g9463l