The Department of Children and Families has received a $500,000 federal grant to study the educational challenges facing children in Wisconsin's child welfare system and develop effective strategies to help foster kids succeed in school.
               
The grant provides funding to allow the Department to coordinate with the Department of Public Instruction to track data between the child welfare system and K-12 schools. This will allow collaboration between child welfare caseworkers and schools to target the educational needs of kids in foster care.

Under the grant, the Department will coordinate child welfare and K-12 data to track outcome trends by child, school, school district and statewide. The data will be used to provide targeted foster youth with high-quality educational services in collaboration with multiple partners.