Building University/Community Partnerships: A Pre-College Program for Foster Youth

Abstract

Developing programs to assist youth who are transitioning from foster care to college is key to their success. Although the number of campus programs that serve youth from foster care has grown over the past 10 years, the number of pre-college programs has not grown at the same pace. Universities are in a unique position to create pre-college programs to serve youth from foster care. Building strong community collaborative partnerships can assist pre-college programs in developing program components to address the needs of youth transitioning from foster care into college. Using an interorganizational community-based collaborative framework, this article will discuss key components to building a successful collaborative. The National Social Work Enrichment Program will be highlighted as an example of the pre-college program model.

Keywords

• pre-college programs
• foster youth
• university-community partnership