Foster Care
Community & care
A strengths-based experience that builds confidence, identity and life skills, supports connectedness, and leaves youth with a creative deliverable of their own.
We support engagement, independent-living skills, resilience, and positive identity and connectedness with the SEL books, keynotes, and the music recording program.
FAQs
Straight answers.
Children in care have often had emotional expression become unsafe. Music reaches emotional content without requiring a child to narrate their own history, which is why it works where direct approaches stall. The consumable format also matters practically — a child keeps their own copy, and it moves with them if a placement changes.
The Psychological Effects of Music Youth Resource Books and recording STEAM Program, as engagement and a peer support activity rather than clinical intervention.
Agencies searching for at risk youth interventions, intervention programs for at risk youth, or youth engagement activities ideas are usually looking for something a young person will choose. At risk youth activities that produce something the young person owns work better than anything framed as a service.
Youth in care miss school at markedly higher rates, largely because placement changes interrupt enrollment. Education liaisons building a student attendance improvement plan for foster youth are working against a structural problem, not a motivational one.
Our part addresses whether school feels worth attending once enrollment is stable. It does not address the placement side.
No, and it is deliberately built not to. The material works through musical activity rather than personal narrative. Nothing in it asks a child to describe their circumstances.
Because each child owns their copy and the material is not sequenced to require continuous participation, a child who changes placements mid-year does not lose their work or have to restart.
The books are youth-facing. Foster parents and caseworkers frequently ask about parenting a teen who has intense emotions, and while we do not publish a caregiver manual, we can present to caregiver audiences and training events.
Yes, in its design — it avoids requiring disclosure and keeps the child in control of what they share, which are trauma-informed principles. It is not a trauma treatment, it does not replace your agency’s trauma-informed model, and it should not be positioned as either. Facilitators working with children in care should have their own trauma training regardless of the material they use.
Youth in foster care graduate at markedly lower rates than their peers, and placement changes drive the attendance losses that predict it. Research identifies attendance, behavior, and course performance — the ABCs — as the strongest predictors of high school completion, more predictive than demographics or socioeconomic status. Attendance is the indicator most responsive to engagement, and programming a young person wants to attend addresses it directly. Agencies searching for dropout prevention programs or middle school programs for at risk students are working the same problem from the education side. This is engagement programming aligned to that framework. It is not a claim that any particular material improves graduation rates.
Black and Native children are overrepresented in foster care, and material that does not reflect the young people in the room tends to be rejected quickly by teenagers who are already skeptical of adult-provided programming. Agencies looking for culturally relevant social emotional learning, culturally relevant books for elementary, or at risk youth books are usually working from exactly that experience. Ask for a sample and let a young person in your care evaluate it. Their reaction is the only test that matters.
Title IV-E, state child welfare allocations, education funds for foster youth including California's Foster Youth Services Coordinating Programs, independent living funds, and McKinney-Vento where applicable.
Yes. Recording gives a young person something that is theirs, which matters in a system where very little is. The finished piece travels with them if a placement changes. It also carries a vocational dimension for older youth in independent living programming — audio and media production has real entry points that do not require a four-year degree.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it. Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear. Agency staff and caseworkers are welcome in the session. We bring the personnel.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place. If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff. Your trauma-informed practice model, case planning, and clinical referral pathways stay exactly as they are. Facilitators should have their own trauma training regardless of what material they use, and our material does not supply it.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Group Activity is built for exactly this — a family engagement event where parents and children participate together rather than sitting through a presentation. That is the difference that matters for attendance. Families come to an event where something happens; they skip an information night. The session is music-driven and participatory, so a parent who speaks little English and a fourth grader are in it on the same terms. For agencies running visitation, caregiver support, or family reunification programming, an event where a child and caregiver do something together — rather than talk — removes the pressure that makes those settings hard.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Group Activity works for foster parent training events, caseworker development, and agency conferences. For caregiver audiences it addresses what emotional expression looks like in a child who has learned it is not safe — which is the question foster parents actually bring. Community and Faith-Based Organizations
How this program runs
Same SIWM work. Built for Foster Care.
Start with the social emotional learning books. Add a keynote. Bring a recording program when you want participants writing and performing — we produce the song and video.
Aligned with foster care priorities for safety, stability, belonging and positive youth development. Through songwriting and media production, youth strengthen SEL, resilience, self-expression, trusted relationships, life skills and college and career readiness. CASEL 5 SEL competencies; National Core Arts (Music/Media Arts); life-skills & public-speaking; trauma-informed, strengths-based practice.
Send a request and tell us this is a Foster Care site.
The Psychological Effects of Music
SEL books & curriculum
SEL books by Ava Johnson plus keynotes for the same rooms.
Ava the Aviator
Keynotes & assemblies
Interactive talks on the science of sound and the psychology of music.
The studio
Recording & music video program
Participants write and perform. We record, produce, and film.