Due to calls to reckon with longstanding institutionalized racism, the spread of COVID-19 through institutions, concern over the use of forceful restraints, emerging research on trauma, and the recent death of 16 year-old Cornelius Fredericks in a Michigan group home, there is a growing body of research and a movement calling for the reduction or elimination of institutional placements in foster care.
Missing from this conversation was a deep, nuanced understanding of the experiences and mental models of young people who have recently lived in these places. Away From Home exists to fill that gap.
Away From Home makes a bold call to end institutional placements in foster care and to replace them with family-based alternatives.