THE ENAY FOUNDATION INC

Description

The Enay Foundation provides and organizes wrap-around services that allow youth in care and youth transitioning to independent adulthood to thrive while in the midst of these extreme, life-changing experiences. When youth arrive at a foster care group home, it is usually a crash landing, and the development of their post-secondary educational readiness, independent living skills, and employability condition rarely improves enough throughout their stay to help them thrive after care. With nine years of experience working directly with youth experiencing foster care and their caregivers, we have developed successful, trauma-sensitive, strengths-based approaches to cultivate youth/adult alliances. When these alliances are present, youth are far more likely to stay connected to their support systems until habits and conditions for success can take root. Our programs are centered on professional development for caregivers and youth, fully-mentored transition programs for students aging out of care, and foster care-to-career pipeline development. In addition to these direct services, we lead efforts across the state of Georgia to build coalitions and organize the efforts of stakeholders for policy and organization-level change, elevating the quality and sustainability of positive outcomes for the foster care population.