Our solutions
The Omni Family Foundation aims to provide youth transitioning beyond foster care a surer path to successful adulthood with these essential efforts:
- Helping youth secure stable futures through housing, skill building, and relationships.
- Grounding them with continued case management and other supports, experience, and education
- Ensuring youth have a safety net they can rely on
- Building a foundation of hope and healing
Our vision for the kind of long-term independence that enables young adults to thrive starts with:
- Expanded access to quality housing for those without family or other supportive adults who can offer a place to call home.
- Quality educational facilities that can offer former foster care youth, as well as those in extended care (an option up to age 21), life skills programs that allow them to “learn by doing.” Workforce development — designed to help youth gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to get good jobs — is also a key part of our approach.
- Partnering with STEM Scout labs which provide re-imagined, creative ways to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by giving youth opportunities to interact with professionals in regular hands-on lab sessions. These unique, thought-provoking classes have the potential to spark new interests and, more importantly for someone coming out of foster care, a career path they might never have imagined.
- Meaningful support to foster parents during this transitional period, with assistance for resources or services not already provided and paid by the State (such as what a parent would provide to a child leaving home for their first job or college: clothes, luggage or transportation).
Studies show that children don’t simply move from adolescence into independent, responsible adults at a certain age. It’s a complex process called “emerging adulthood.” And it’s particularly critical for former foster youth.