On January 13, 2010 the HEY team facilitated a training for Jewish Vocational Services, called Best Practices for Employers Working with Foster Youth. The goal for this training was to help the participants to see that despite facing complex barriers, foster youth are able to achieve and succeed in the workplace when matched with supervisors who set realistic expectations and provide supports that allow for a learning curve.
In order to accomplish our goal some of the different topics we talked about were: the general overview of the foster care system in SF County, common challenges faced by foster youth and strategies for successfully working with foster youth in the workplace.
Personally I was touched by seeing how many different service providers wanted to learn about foster youth and the challenges they face so, that they can try to give them more support. I was extremely happy to be able to assist Leslie Brown, HEY’s Program Coordinator, with this training because I did not only be able to share my experience as a former foster youth with the participants, but also was able to grow in a professional level. Noticing how Leslie created and facilitated her training gave me ideas of how I can become a better facilitator myself.
The outcome turned out pretty good. The participants were happy with what they learned and were interested in attending more HEY training soon. 
Related posts:
- Great Training Series: Integration and Professional Development of Consumers
- Training to a Group of San Francisco State MSW Students
- HEY’s Developing Empowered Youth Toolkit – Coming Soon!
- Project Independence hiring Youth Services Coordinator (fremont / union city / newark)
- Surviving the Battle of Services
