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 »

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 »