Permanent Youth Connections

Permanent Youth Connections

The Permanent Youth Connections (PYC) Program recognizes that foster care placement is meant to be temporary in nature. PYC is committed to assisting children, youth, and Non-Minor Dependents (NMDs) receiving permanent placement or supportive transition to adulthood services in achieving a permanent family through reunification, adoption, legal guardianship, or other lifelong connection to caring adults, including at least one adult who will provide a permanent, parent-like relationship for the child or Non-Minor Dependent.

PYC Program Goals

The goals of PYC are:

• To provide the child, youth or Non-Minor Dependent a stable placement in the most family-like setting possible;
• To assist in locating a permanent connection for the child, youth, or Non-Minor Dependent whether it be with a relative, a current caregiver or another significant adult in their life or community; and
• To assist in preparation for adulthood.

Forms of Permanency

When we speak about children, youth, and non-minors achieving “permanency,” we mean a permanent connection to a supportive, committed adult who takes on a parental role in their life and provides:

• A safe, stable and secure parenting relationship;
• Love;
• Unconditional commitment;
• Lifelong support in which the child, youth, or non-minor has the opportunity to maintain contacts with the important people in their life, including siblings.

Legal Permanency

When we speak of “legal permanency,” we refer to the rights and benefits of a secure legal and social family status, which may take the following forms:

• Return home to parents;
• Adoption with placement preference to a relative or current resource family*;
• Tribal customary Adoption;
• Legal Guardianship

* Includes NMD Adoption for 18 – 20 yr. olds. Adult Adoption may be an option for non-minors after Juvenile Court dependency has been dismissed.

Relational Permanency

Relational permanency refers to the primary attachments, family and other significant relationships that offer trust and reciprocity. Although some children, youth, and non-minors have found satisfying relational permanence through relationships without a legal status, others have only felt secure when a committed emotional relationship was legalized through adoption or legal guardianship.

When legal permanency cannot be achieved, a plan of Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA) can be made more secure by assuring the permanent commitment of a person, not just a place to live, and reinforcing that relationship with rituals, ceremonies, inclusion in a family’s legal will, a legal name change, and / or other symbols of “belonging” or “claiming.”
If you would like to be the permanent connection for a child, youth, or non-minor in foster care, please contact the young person’s Child Welfare Worker. Call the RFA Caregiver Recruitment Hotline: (510) 259-3575 or visit myresourcefamily.org for information about becoming a resource family.