The purpose of Improving Service Delivery to Youth in the Child Welfare System is to support the effective implementation of strategies to help youth at risk of aging out or who are 18-21 and still involved with the child welfare system to develop skills to strengthen and manage relationships with biological family members and other important individuals in their lives. These strategies will facilitate reunification, when safe and appropriate, or other legal permanency for older youth in foster care (including those who enter care at age 16 or older), and promote a healthy transition to adulthood.

While achieving permanency is an important result of this FOA, the critical part of the work is to develop, implement, and support a framework or practice model to promote protective mechanisms in youth that allows for increased capacity and skills to build and maintain lasting healthy relationships. The target population will be determined by the applicant's detailed data analysis, but older children and youth must be between 10 and 21, and in foster care, or young adults who have aged out but are still involved with the foster care system.

Projects funded will be expected to:

1. Increase reunification or other permanency for youth who are at risk of aging out of the foster care system;
2. Build protective mechanisms (i.e. self-regulation, coping, and self-efficacy) and factors with youth to promote relational competencies and the ability to successfully seek out environments and social settings that support their own positive development now and in the future;
3. Demonstrate effective strategies to promote connecting youth with adults in a long-lasting and meaningful way;
4. Develop models or strategies of youth relational competency, youth leadership, employment and educational achievement;
5. Evaluate the processes and outcomes of these strategies and models; and

Each project will serve as a "learning laboratory" producing knowledge about capacity-building and effective practices in the coordination and delivery of services to young people in foster care. These lessons will inform practice, program, and policies at the local, State, and national levels. Due Date for Applications: July 07, 2011.