Awareness,Analysis, Engagement: Critical Consciousness Through Foster Youth Advisory Board Participation

Foster youth advisory boards provide child welfare-involved young people a forum through which to impact the policies, programs, and services that govern their care. In addition to facilitating policy change, these boards may also enable participating youth to cultivate a deeper understanding of themselves and their worlds. The present study utilized a strengths-based, critical consciousness framework to describe the ways in which 15 foster youth advisory board members in a single state reflect on, analyze, and respond to their socio-political worlds. To this end, the author aims to describe youth advisory board processes, while attempting to answer the question, “How does critical consciousness manifest through foster youth advisory board participation?” Emergent themes are organized around the existing dimensions of critical consciousness. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.