Youth Villages

In 1980, Patrick Lawler was a young probation officer in Tennessee’s Shelby County. Lawler had started his career at just 18 working with boys in a local group home, which is why his experience caught the attention of Memphis judge Kenneth Turner.

A program to help youth aging out of foster care transition to adulthood is expanding to two more major cities and two more states, part of a national rollout financed in part by major philanthropic investment in youth services.

The Tennessee-based Youth Villages, one of the largest nonprofits in the country, has awarded New York City and Pittsburgh major funding to implement a promising support program for young adults who have recently left foster care.

Christen Glickman, the former government relations director for the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI), is in as federal policy manager for Youth Villages, a Tennessee-based national provider of residential and community-based services for children and families.

With the notable exception of the fate of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, there’s nothing doing yet on youth-related issues and the White House. Jeff Sessions and Tom Price, President Trump’s respective nominees to lead the Justice and Health and Human Services departments, have yet to receive confirmation votes by the full Senate.