Greetings, from the road! The Sowing Resilience: A Bloom Kentucky Listening Tour is about halfway complete. We are making 19 stops in total across every region in Kentucky. We have powerful partners in every region that have been integral to the success of this Listening Tour series. Much like the motto used by the fabled Dillon Panthers in the hit TV show Friday Night Lights, our Kentucky Youth Advocates team members are focused and operating [...]
What does Bloom Kentucky and Mickey Mouse have in common this summer? They are both ALL EARS. As soon as the gavel fell for the 2023 state legislative session, Bloom Kentucky already had a plan to get advocates excited about 2024. Kentucky Youth Advocates and Bloom Kentucky want to hear from you! During May and June 2023, we’re hosting regionally-based listening sessions across the Commonwealth to bring local advocates and leaders together to identify strategies [...]
“Hope blooms when the time is ready.” – Debasish Mridha After seeing waves of the opioid epidemic pass through Kentucky since the late 1990s, Kentucky is ready and well-equipped to turn the tide. Due to actions taken by all three branches of Kentucky’s government, and major efforts by the Attorney General’s office specifically, we are set to see hundreds of millions of dollars come directly to Kentucky from the opioid settlement. With investments and persistence, [...]
September is National Kinship Care Month, and it is also recognized in Kentucky as Kinship Care Month by Governor Andy Beshear. It is important to continue lifting up the voices of our relative and fictive kin caregivers to ensure the children in their care have every opportunity to grow up to be successful and thriving Kentucky citizens. Kinship and fictive kin caregivers continue to step up for children in Kentucky to ensure they stay safely [...]
The Thriving Families, Safer Children work in Kentucky continues in many different ways among the partner organizations. One of the ways that the partnership is working towards ensuring kids are safe and families are thriving is by engaging in locally-focused conversations around primary and secondary child abuse prevention. The Department for Community Based Services, Administrative Office of the Courts, and Kentucky Youth Advocates facilitated 9 regional community conversations called Visioning Sessions to engage each region [...]
Thriving Families, Safer Children (TFSC) is a first-of-its-kind effort of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Prevent Child Abuse America. The partnership is working in 22 sites, including Kentucky, from coast to coast and a sovereign tribal nation. The Thriving Families effort seeks to demonstrate that intentional, coordinated investment in a full continuum of prevention and robust community-based networks of support will promote overall child and family well-being, [...]
Kentucky Youth Advocates, in partnership with Casey Family Programs and True Up Kentucky, is launching a new project focused on foster care alumni and their experiences in residential care or institutional settings* while in the child welfare system. Our researchers include foster care alumni, helping shape questions and facilitate conversations. KYA and True Up will advocate and work for those with lived experiences in the child welfare system by lifting up their voices with the [...]
This blog post was originally posted on The Child Welfare Advocate Blog by WKU Center for Child Welfare Education and Research on April 14, 2021. Kentucky was recognized for the third year in a row as having the highest rate of child maltreatment in the nation.[1] That is an overwhelming statistic and a lot to unpack for those of us who work with families and children. So, what does that mean for advocates? As an advocate, [...]
Throughout the month of November 2020 there will be a round of nine virtual forums related to the federal Family First Prevention Services Act with the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Department for Community Based Services, and Kentucky Youth Advocates, in partnership with Casey Family Programs. In the summer of 2019, the same groups hosted nine in-person regional forums to introduce Kentuckians to the Family First Prevention Services Act and get a better [...]
The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services recently publicly announced the federal government’s acceptance of the Kentucky Family First Prevention Plan. The Department for Community Based Services and others who have been awaiting patiently for approval quickly cheered and then went back to work. We at Kentucky Youth Advocates wanted to take a moment to pause and properly celebrate the major piece of the Child Welfare Transformation pie that will lend to keeping more [...]
