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Foster Care Research Donor Appeal
Education is a vaccine against poverty
The Crisis
In New York, 80% of children in foster care are not reading proficiently, and many face other unaddressed challenges. Few social workers have training in special education advocacy or the legal frameworks—IDEA and ADA—that guarantee these children's rights. Most foster youth navigate school systems alone, without an advocate ensuring they receive the services they're legally entitled to. They're already managing trauma, instability, and repeated school changes. Without intervention, reading struggles compound into educational failure, cutting off pathways to independence, higher education, and economic opportunity.
What We Know
Our organization has spent years proving that professional educational advocacy works. We help students with disabilities access the services they're legally entitled to under IDEA and ADA - and we've seen firsthand how advocacy transforms academic trajectories and builds the foundation for independence.
Our Research Study
Does professional educational advocacy measurably improve academic outcomes for children in foster care? This is the question driving our two-year research study. We will deploy trained advocates to work directly with foster youth, ensuring that eligible students have access to services guaranteed under the IDEA and the ADA. We will systematically document progress in strengthening literacy skills, educational attainment, attendance, participation, service utilization, confidence, and well-being. We will assess whether advocacy closes the persistent academic gap that characterizes foster care in New York. The evidence we generate will inform state-level policy change—but we need your support to make this research possible.
Why This Matters
Education is a vaccine against poverty. When a child can read, write, graduate, and access job training or higher education, they have a real chance at independence and a future they can control. Right now, most foster youth navigate the school system without educational advocacy or the supports and services needed to address the issues that often result from a traumatic and neglected childhood, leaving them to fall through the wide cracks in our education system.
What Comes Next
Once we have completed our research and have the data, we will do what we do best: Leverage evidence and law to drive change. We will work with legislators to enact legislation ensuring that every child in foster care in New York receives the educational advocacy they need to develop resilience, experience accomplishment, feel secure, and flourish in life.
Your Donation
Fund this research and help us build the evidence base for transforming educational outcomes for thousands of vulnerable children. Your support enables advocates to work with foster youth, tracks meaningful progress, and creates the blueprint for policy change - not just in New York, but as a model for the nation.
Ready to invest in research that could change everything?
Contact us to discuss funding this initiative.
