Partners for Our Children

Partners for Our Children

CURRENT NEWS:

Youth who "age out" of foster care at 18 face higher rates of homelessness, unemployment and incarceration. Last fall, Congress passed legislation that allows states to tap into federal funds to keep youth in foster care up to age 21.

Mark Courtney's research and testimony to Congress helped support passage of this legislation.
Partners for Our Children and the Juvenile Law Center recently issued a joint report from a convening that explored how states can use this new law to smooth the transition of foster youth into adulthood.
Newsweek called Mark Courtney's cost-benefit analysis of allowing youth to remain in care until age 21 "a radical shift in child-welfare policy." See more media coverage of Courtney's report, which was released by a bi-partisan group of Californian lawmakers seeking to expand that state's foster care system to age 21.
Mark Courtney was keynote speaker and Adolescents Aging out of Foster Care was the subject at a conference held in April at the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota.

Our 2008-2009 agenda – developed in collaboration with our partners, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services Children's Administration – focuses on these key initiatives:

CONTACT INFORMATION:

info@partnersforourchildren.org
Voice: 206.221.3100
Fax: 206.221.3155

PRESENTED BY:
WA State Seal.

LEADERSHIP:

Mark Courtney, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Partners for Our Children

Executive Director Mark Courtney, a leading expert on child welfare services in the United States, has joined the faculty of the University of Washington School of Social Work as the Ballmer Chair in Child Well-Being, the first endowed chair in the School. He has conducted extensive research on individual, family, and societal contributors to the well-being of children placed in out-of-home care. Mark focuses on applied research; his studies involve active collaboration with multiple stakeholders in the policy and practice communities to determine how to improve children’s services nationally.

Most recently Mark was the McCormick Tribune Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and served as the Director of the Chapin Hall Center for Children from 2001 to 2006. Before that, he was on the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, Mark was a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy.

Mark has served as a consultant to the federal government, state departments of social services, local public and private child welfare agencies around the country, and the foundation community. He has a master of social work degree in management and planning, as well as a doctorate from the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mark and his wife have two daughters.

This project is a public-private collaboration between the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services,
the University of Washington, and the private sector commited to making positive changes in the child welfare system.