The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Foster Youth initiative partners with research organization Child Trends to understand how well we are supporting young people with foster care experience in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City and nationally. Child Trends tracks progress toward our goals and shares findings that strengthen our work and that of our partners. As part of this effort, Child Trends engages young people with lived experience in foster care through an Evaluation Advisory Board that interprets results and shapes recommendations, and has interns engaged in each stage of the research process. With the Foundation’s Opportunity Youth initiative, Child Trends partnered with a Research Group comprised of youth and adult advocates working to improve youth-serving systems through policy change.
Below are summaries of three recent research products drawn from these engagement efforts: authentic youth engagement in policy, youth-led career pathways, and meaningful participation of youth in research. The throughline across all three research briefs is that youth are essential partners in generating evidence and solutions that will transform systems and policies that impact their lives and their opportunities to thrive as they continue their journey into adulthood.
In a cross-organizational study, Child Trends applied their Authentic Youth Engagement in Policy Framework, developed in partnership with a Research Group of youth and adult advocates, to 32 U.S. organizations to generate a deeper understanding of youth engagement, inform future investments, and improve technical assistance.
Authentic Youth Engagement Defined
The Research Group defined authentic youth engagement:
“Youth are active partners in shaping decisions, policies, and programs; empowered and valued as contributors, co-creators, and decision makers in their communities; and intentionally supported in these roles.”
The researchers explored five questions with each participating organization:
The research brief highlights how authentic engagement generates positive policy, community, organizational and individual youth outcomes, such as youth being involved in coalitions, raising awareness and educating their community, and reshaping organizational practices to create more youth-led decision-making.
Clear opportunities for future investment include:
Together, these insights validate investing in youth engagement as a driver of measurable change for youth, while underscoring the need for continued learning and evaluation to sustain and scale these practices.
This youth-authored brief, developed by the Child Trends 2025 Evaluation Advisory Board, centers young people with lived experience in foster care as co‑interpreters of evaluation data and designers of recommendations. Board members chose to focus on career development and employment “because these issues consistently shape the opportunities, stability, and long-term success of young people with foster care experience.”
Drawing on evaluation findings and their own expertise, Board members identified three structural barriers to meaningful careers for foster youth:
And they call for philanthropic investments that:
This work models how the Foundation’s youth-focused work can help embed youth leadership in interpretation, recommendations and field guidance, aligning investments in research and evaluation with the Foundation’s commitment to youth-driven change.
Read the brief: “Roadmap to Career Services That Meet Foster Youth Where They Are: One Size Doesn’t Fit All”
The Youth in Research zine is a youth-created guide that illustrates what authentic youth engagement in research and evaluation looks like in practice. Developed by summer interns with lived experience in foster care, it offers concrete, youth-defined principles for:
As the zine’s creators say on their page titled “constructive insights:” “From our interviews, youth made it clear: Research often feels like it is done about us instead of with us. Sharing lived experience can be heavy, even painful, and too often researchers forget the human cost.”
The zine is a creative, youth-authored tool offering a practical roadmap for centering lived experience in study design, implementation and dissemination. The authors share reflections, resources, and encouragement for future youth researchers.
Read the Youth in Research Zine.
These examples highlight how when young people are partners in generating evidence, and not just the subjects of it, the research becomes sharper, the recommendations are more actionable, and the systems we’re trying to change have a better chance of changing.
