What's New
Michigan Launches New Web Site to Help Youth Aging Out of Foster Care
Michigan has launched a new, colorful web site to help its youth from foster care transition to adulthood. The web site, recently unveiled by the Department of Human Services, provides young adults with services, information and links to issues important to them.
Youth can find help for everything from banking to buying a car to finding a place to live to high school graduation requirements to applying to college to health advice. One section offers tips on relationships and dating, including how to spot an unhealthy relationship. The new web site is http://www.michigan.gov/fyit.
State officials launched the website at a statewide Michigan Opportunities Initiative youth board conference and received good feedback. "The youth reaction has been very positive," said Kate Hanley, the DHS director of Adoption and Permanency Services. "The youth really felt like we listened to them and their concerns for needing access to assistance 24/7, even after our offices are closed."
The web site is the result of recommendations from the Statewide Task Force on Youth Transitioning from Foster Care. Youth from foster care played a key role in creating the web site, helping with conceptual ideas. Since last September youth from foster care, DHS, and members of at least six other state agencies worked together to develop the web site. The departments helped to gather and update materials to create a youth-friendly format. "It was really a lot of work to bring all these things together, and we really had to get the support of the other departments," said Hanley. Youth board members across the state will maintain and update the web site.
Jen Leedy, 20, spent eight years in foster care before aging out recently. Enrolled at Macomb Community College with a major in communications, Leedy serves as vice president of the youth board in her county and helped provided feedback on the web site during its development.
"We provided a lot of suggestions about what information would be interesting to people of our age, what would be useful and what would catch our eye," Leedy said. "This site makes it so easy to find all the information instead of searching through Google or all the other sites. I hope more states do the same thing."
