California Youth Connection (CYC)

The California Youth Connection has announced Robin Allen as its new interim executive director, following a chaotic few weeks for the foster youth advocacy group that saw former director Haydee Cuza resign after laying off more than half of the organization’s staff in the middle of a global pandemic. 

Last week, a community advocacy coordinator for one of the nation’s most prominent foster youth organizations started building a webinar to provide young people in northern California access to self-soothing techniques as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the state. 

On February 12, 200 California Youth Connection (CYC) members, allies and community members gathered to celebrate 30 years of the organization’s youth-led advocacy in California, and to continue the fight with a new bill to prevent unnecessary placement changes for foster youth in the state.

Each year for the past 29 years California Youth Connection (CYC) has sent hundreds of current and former youth from across California to a different college campus, for four days, to come up with policy recommendations that they then take to Sacramento in January.

In the summer of 1988, a handful of foster youth who gathered for Saturday-afternoon meetings at a daycare center in Los Angeles started with an ambitious but improbable goal: to give a voice to the tens of thousands of children in foster care across California.

Every holiday season, 17-year-old Jordain Rodriguez sends a note to two families she barely knows with a simple wish: She’d like to see her nieces and nephews. Around the holidays and on each of the children’s birthdays, she writes emails to the two families who adopted her family members, asking for pictures, any recent updates and a chance to talk to them.

By Kuaikuai Wei Research has shown that more than 60 percent of children who have been in foster care at least two years have moved two or more times in the system.

By Anna Maier When it comes to successfully implementing legislation, the devil is often in the details. That is why a Bay Area advocacy group is making sure that foster youth get the support entitled to them by the California Fostering Connections to Success Act (AB12.)