On Monday, August 16, 2021, representatives from the OHIO YAB and ACTION Ohio held a virtual focus group with Disability Rights Ohio. Personal experiences shared by individuals included substandard education in residential placements and not being diagnosed with dyslexia until high school.

Above is a diagram that illustrates the key themes that arose. Many thanks to Disability Rights Ohio for their willingness to explore solutions and give a voice to current and former foster youth.

Moving forward, the OHIO YAB would like for county boards of developmental disabilities to be better informed when it comes to:

• Resources that exist to support former foster youth
• Trauma experienced by former foster youth, such as the high rate of PTSD

The OHIO YAB proposes cross-training for developmental disability service providers in order to help them to better understand youth who have experienced both foster care and a disability. The purpose would be to inform and empower these providers better support foster youth who are transitioning from foster care to developmental disability board services.

Thanks to support from Disability Rights Ohio, we were able to participate in a virtual meeting with Director Hauck and her staff on Wednesday, May 16, 2022. During the call, we mentioned that we would love to invite Director Hauck’s statewide leadership when it comes to establishing additional conduits for these two systems to coordinate with one another such as:

• Establishing a statewide team to focus on coordination of care for foster youth with disabilities 
• Developing ongoing cross-trainings that  include disability service providers and child welfare staff.