Posts By: Sondra Lehmann

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 »

Often, youth and their families know best what they need and how to make services work for them, which makes it important for legislators to hear from youth when drafting policy that impacts them. That’s why TNOYS hosts Youth in Action Capitol Day during each Texas legislative session. The timing couldn’t have been better this… Read more »

  At the end of 2016, Austin community organizations successfully completed a collaborative challenge launched on September 7th to house 50 youth experiencing homelessness in 100 days, with at least 50% of these being youth with foster care involvement.  In addition to the direct impact of housing youth, this effort represented a significant step forward… Read more »

Attendees at yesterday’s Youth Safety Summit heard sobering stories and statistics about youth falling victim to human trafficking here in Texas, but they also left armed with new tools to fight the problem and encouraged about state leaders’ dedication to this important issue. The summit, hosted by TNOYS in partnership with Roy Maas’ Youth Alternatives… Read more »

  By Lara O’Toole   For many years, it was considered the norm to physically restrain or seclude individuals who presented challenging behaviors while in mental health facilities, prisons, nursing homes and even schools. While this practice still occurs all too often, over the past decade the use of seclusion and restraint interventions has come… Read more »

    TNOYS was pleased to host a small gathering last week for leaders of our member organizations to meet and hear from Texas Department of Children and Family Services Commissioner Hank Whitman. Whitman took on his new role earlier this year, after having served for 22 years with the Department of Public Safety and… Read more »