Posts By: Sondra Lehmann

In May, TNOYS began an exciting new chapter as we officially established operations in Houston with the hiring of Dr. Valerie Zanders, our new Director of Policy, Research, and Evaluation there. We’re excited to have a stronger presence in Houston, which is such an important center for youth services in Texas, and to introduce our… Read more »

  By Kara Robbins, Intern with TNOYS member organization Upbring & MSW candidate at the University of Texas at Austin Zoe was a 19-year-old single mom who felt completely overwhelmed by the demands of providing a loving, safe, and stable home life for her 5-year-old son. The most frustrating challenge was finding a job that… Read more »

When explaining the work of Boys Town Texas, the organization’s Executive Director Janie Cook refers to a description she once heard from a colleague: “She said that we teach adults how to raise children,” Cook recalls. “We’re about children but most of the work we do is with adults because children don’t grow up in… Read more »

Together with a team of partner organizations in Central Texas, TNOYS is launching a new initiative to bring together two important principles of youth services work: youth engagement and trauma-informed care. The research phase of our project – called Recovery Through Participation – began last fall and in April we publicly kicked it off with… Read more »

My favorite part of my job at TNOYS is working directly with our member organizations. True to our name, TNOYS genuinely operates as a network of organizations serving Texas youth and families. This means that members drive major organizational decisions, through representation on the TNOYS Board of Directors, opportunities to inform and approve TNOYS’ legislative… Read more »

The 85th Texas Legislative Session has been an important one for the state’s child welfare system. A critical goal for TNOYS this session has been to secure increased funding for foster care and other services that serve Texas’ most vulnerable youth, to prevent the kind of headlines we’ve seen recently where youth are forced to… Read more »

TNOYS’ annual conference is an oldie but a goodie! We’ve been hosting the conference for well over 30 years now, keeping some of the key features that have made it so popular over the years but also introducing new twists to keep our content fresh.   This year, as always, we’ll have the same great… Read more »

TNOYS’ Program Coordinator, Elizabeth Flint, was excited to play a part this year in one of TNOYS’ longest-running and most successful youth engagement programs – PEAKS Adventure Camp. 150 DFPS foster care youth and adult partners from across Texas traveled to Wimberley over Spring Break to participate in the camp, which focuses on developing youth… Read more »

  By Guest Blogger Patricia Hart, Co-Author of “Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness”   Texas’ 85th legislative session kicked off earlier this year, giving lawmakers until the end of May to balance a state budget that is 3 percent smaller than that of the previous session. Having the power of the purse, the legislature must decide… Read more »

There have been a lot of headlines recently about the need to fix Texas’ child welfare system, but it’s also important to recognize that there are many organizations across the state that are leaders in implementing best practices to keep youth and families healthy and happy. Last week, TNOYS brought several of these organizations together… Read more »