Do You Have What It Takes?
A new resource to help youth prepare for independence!

● True stories by teens

● 300 pages

● Dozens of lessons and activities.

$34.95

to order online.

Represent (formerly Foster Care Youth United) began publication in June, 1993. It is a bi-monthly, 40-page magazine written by and for young people in foster care, with a nationwide circulation. Most subscriptions are ordered by foster care agencies which then make the magazine available to teens as part of their independent living program. The magazine is written by a core staff of 30 teen in New York City . However, the Represent also publishes stories, poems, and essays from teens across the country.

Represent’s mission is to help youth in care stand up, be counted, and be heard. Its stories help teens plan for the future, survive in the present, and understand their pasts. The stories also make their thoughts and feelings accessible to staff and policy makers so they will have the information they need to develop more responsive practices and policies.

You can read the best stories from Represent have been in more than 25 anthologies on everything from adoption to independent living. Go to our store for details.

Represent often includes lessons and activities for independent living staff. Click here for a selection of lessons from previous issues.

For parents: Youth Communication also publishes Rise, a newsletter written by parents who are receiving preventive services or who have lost children to the child welfare system.

A Word About Foster Care

Nationwide, about 500,000 young people live in foster care. They are removed from their homes when the courts determine that they’ve been abused or neglected by their parents, or when poverty, death, illness or other circumstances beyond their control prevent their biological parents from properly caring for them. Some older children go into foster care when their families feel they can no longer supervise them.

Once a child goes into the system, he or she lives with either a foster family (where the child doesn't know the family), a kinship foster family (where the foster family is related to the child), or in a group home, a residence that usually houses older foster youth. Some young people end up being adopted out of the foster care system, but many others spend months or even years in foster care, often lacking stability in their lives and a sense of home.

About our books
Stories from Represent have been anthologized in several books by Youth Communication. The Heart Knows Something Different (Persea Books, 1996) is a collection of personal essays first published in Represent; in addition, The Struggle to Be Strong: True Stories By Teens About Resilience (Free Spirit, 2000), Things Get Hectic: Teens Write About the Violence That Surrounds Them (Simon & Schuster, 1998) and Out With It: Gay and Straight Teens Write About Homosexuality (Youth Communication, 1996) feature stories from Represent, as well as from New Youth Connections (NYC), our other teen-written magazine.