Youth Leadership By Design

By 2020, we had spent years creating spaces where youth in care felt welcomed, supported, and heard.

Then we were challenged to ask a difficult question:

“Were we designing spaces for youth in care to participate—or spaces that positioned them to lead?”

That question, posed by our Illinois Department of Children and Family Services program monitor, Kevin Walsh, changed the trajectory of our work.

It wasn’t a complicated question.

Created by statute in 2014, the Illinois Youth Advisory Board provides youth in the child welfare system the opportunity to collectively address systemic issues and build on youth advisory efforts that have been advising IDCFS since 1994.

If the purpose of the Youth Advisory Boards—and the legislation that established them—was to improve outcomes for youth in care by influencing policy and practice, were we designing meetings that created meaningful opportunities for youth to lead that work?

The answer, we realized, was: not enough.

Like many organizations, we had invested heavily in youth development. We wanted youth in care to feel welcomed, connected, informed, and supported. Those are essential goals.

But they are not the same as leadership.

Leadership requires a different set of competencies. It asks youth in care to facilitate conversations, understand how systems work, analyze policy, build consensus, navigate disagreement, and transform lived experience into effective advocacy.

That realization prompted us to redesign the Regional Youth Advisory Board experience from the ground up.

We developed a twelve-module leadership curriculum that has continued to evolve over the years. From the beginning, it was designed to be co-facilitated by youth and adults. That choice reflected an important belief: leadership cannot simply be taught to youth in care. It must be practiced with them.

The shift was profound.

Youth grew beyond sharing their own experiences to also representing the perspectives of their peers. They expanded their focus to collective advocacy, asking, "What are we hearing from youth in care across the state? What changes would improve the lives of youth in care?"

Regional meetings became places where youth increasingly co-designed agendas, co-facilitated discussions, and assumed responsibility for the quality of the conversation itself. Leadership was no longer something we hoped would emerge; it became something we intentionally cultivated.

Our longstanding partnership with the Loyola University Chicago Children and Family Justice Center, and particularly with Anita Weinberg, had long provided youth with opportunities to learn about existing laws and policies, understand how systems change happens, and explore strategies for advancing the priorities they identified.

The leadership curriculum transformed what happened next.

Because youth were developing skills in facilitation, systems thinking, collaboration, and advocacy, they were engaging with policy in a fundamentally different way. They were no longer simply learning about legislation—they were analyzing it, discussing it with one another, identifying collective priorities, and representing the voices of their peers with confidence and credibility.

Their advocacy became grounded not only in lived experience, but also in leadership, research, policy knowledge, and thoughtful preparation.

Looking back, I think the most important shift was not the curriculum itself.

It was the question behind it.

Were we designing experiences that helped youth in care participate? Or were we designing experiences that positioned them to lead?

Those are not the same thing.

When leadership becomes the goal, everything changes. Meeting agendas change. Adult roles change. Success is measured differently.

Instead of asking, "Did youth attend?" we begin asking, "Did youth influence?"

Instead of asking, "Did they tell their stories?" we ask, "Did they represent the experiences of their peers and help shape better policy?"

Instead of asking, "Were they consulted?" we ask, "Were they trusted to co-create the work?"

This challenge isn't unique to child welfare. Many organizations and systems want youth leadership, but don't yet have the structure to support it. Whether in child welfare, education, local government, or community organizations, meaningful youth leadership requires more than inviting youth to the table. It requires intentionally designing the relationships, supports, and opportunities that allow youth and adults to lead together. That's the work of building authentic youth–adult partnerships—a model that can strengthen decision-making and leadership wherever youth have a stake in the outcome.

That shift in thinking continues to shape Be Strong Families.

It is one of the most enduring lessons from our decade of partnership with Illinois youth:

If we want youth leadership, we must design for leadership.