During Learning Lab I, the Class of 2025 will explore leadership in relation to the foster care system in North Carolina.

Class of 2025 Learning Lab I Focus

During Learning Lab I, the Class of 2025 will explore leadership in relation to the foster care system in North Carolina. In a given year, there are approximately 437,000 youth in the United States foster care system, including over 17,000 children in North Carolina. There has been a more than 25% increase in the number of children in the foster care system in North Carolina over the past five years.

Through this experience, Park Scholars will evaluate how socioeconomic status, personal background, systemic racism, and policy cause issues within the foster care system and reflect on the effects of these issues. They will assess how interdisciplinary leadership roles function together in order to create a system equipped to address complex foster care issues and learn how leaders identify short- and long-term practical solutions that reflect an understanding of the needs of the foster children and families they are serving.

Preparation Materials

• The All-Too-Common Tragedy of Foster Care
• Seeking Solutions: Covid 19 Cripples Struggling System
• Proposed law could make life easier for North Carolina’s foster parents
• Foster Care Bill of Rights (introduction and North Carolina section)
• Foster Care Statistics
• Foster care case numbers continue to climb in NC, as opioid crisis affects families
• North Carolina Specialized Foster Care Plan
• Foster Care and Adoption Are Now In A State of Crisis in North Carolina
• Life in College After a Life in Foster Care
• For Foster Care Kids, College Degrees are Elusive
• How ‘Shadow’ Foster Care is Tearing Families Apart
• Foster Care Explained: What It Is, How It Works and How It Can Be Improved

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