Fostering Healthy Futures®
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Background
Fostering Healthy Futures® (FHF) programs build on youth’s strengths and assets through mentoring and skills training to promote healthy development. FHF serves children and youth with current or previous child welfare involvement due to one or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These ACEs may include maltreatment, out-of-home placement, instability in housing, caregivers or schools, and/or parental substance use, mental illness, or incarceration. FHF programs were developed and tested at the Kempe Center and the University of Denver through three randomized controlled trials.
Fostering Healthy Futures® for Preteens (FHF-P)
FHF-P is a 30-week preventive intervention program for preadolescent children ages 9-11 and consists of weekly skills groups and 1:1 mentoring by graduate students in social work, psychology, or a related field. Skills groups provide an opportunity for children who have all experienced ACEs to process their experiences and practice important social skills, such as feelings identification, problem solving, and healthy coping. Studies have demonstrated that children who participated in FHF, compared to a control group, evidenced by:
- Better mental health functioning
- Fewer trauma symptoms
- Less mental health treatment
- Less delinquency/justice involvement
- Higher quality of life
- Fewer placement changes
- Less residential treatment
- Higher rates of permanency
Fostering Healthy Futures® for Teens (FHF-T)
FHF-T is a 30-week preventive intervention program that utilizes individualized skills-based mentoring for 8th and 9th graders. Graduate student mentors are trained to support adolescents in goal setting and then work with them to learn and implement skills to help them achieve their goals. In addition to weekly mentoring, teens have the opportunity to participate in workshops to build and practice psychosocial skills. FHF-T’s outcomes include reducing juvenile justice involvement and increasing permanency.
Alignment with the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA)
FHF programs have been reviewed and rated through an independent process in Colorado, which aligns with the Federal Prevention Services Clearinghouse standards. FHF-P was rated “Well-Supported,” and FHF-T was rated “Supported.” Both programs and their outcomes are consistent with FFPSA goals including supporting evidence-based programs, increasing permanency, reducing congregate care, improving mental health, and supporting kinship care. Stakeholder evaluations and rates of program engagement suggest that Fostering Healthy Futures® programming is highly acceptable to diverse children, families, and community partners.
Find Out More
For additional program information, please contact FHF Dissemination Director:
Michel Holien
303-817-8162
[email protected]
