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RETURN HOME INITIATIVE: Support in Group Care
GROUP CARE SETTINGS
Indigenous youth in group care are too often removed from their communities, disconnected from their culture, and moved from placement to placement without stability or belonging. These systemic failures create deep emotional wounds and limit opportunities for healing.
Our Return Home Initiative was established to address this issue. We place personalized support in their pocket and dedicated staff at their door, ensuring every youth in care has consistent advocacy, cultural connection, and safety.
Support Approach
Through the Return Home Initiative, youth will receive individualized, culturally grounded, and trauma-informed care designed to restore connection, belonging, and stability while promoting long-term emotional, behavioral, and social wellness.
This Initiative integrates two core supports:
CareLink Support – An innovative, evolving virtual care system that ensures continuity and connection across placements. Each youth is paired with a dedicated Personal Support Staff who provides advocacy, coordination, relational continuity, goal support, and crisis guidance. Through the Youth and Caregiver Portals, both youth and caregivers access cultural learning, life skills, goal-setting tools, and regular check-ins to maintain consistent, aligned support.
In-Person Support – Individualized, trauma-informed, community-based support. These sessions provide safe, culturally enriched opportunities for youth to develop emotional regulation, life skills, social competence, and long-term goals. This support strengthens trust, personal empowerment, and cultural identity, creating a foundation for successful reunification and lifelong resilience.
This initiative provides youth with the resources, mentorship, and protection that have been missing for far too long. By pairing each young person with a Personal Support Staff and continuous access to our CareLink platform, we ensure they are never alone in their journey, no matter where they are placed or how often circumstances change.
Our supports are designed to:
- Overcome barriers to therapeutic success through individualized, trauma-informed care that is rooted in culture, connection, and belonging.
- Stabilize placements by offering consistent, personalized support that strengthens communication between youth, caregivers, and Nations.
- Rebuild cultural connection and identity through mentorship, language revitalization, and meaningful community engagement.
- Create accountability and protection within group care environments to ensure that youth are safe, respected, and truly heard.
- Bring youth home as quickly and safely as possible by preparing them for successful reunification with their families and communities.
Every Indigenous youth deserves more than a placement; they deserve a path home. Through this initiative, group care becomes a place of healing and preparation rather than permanence. It becomes a bridge that helps youth recover from trauma, rebuild cultural identity, and return to where they belong: among their people, within their culture, and supported by their community.
Personal Support Staff
Each youth receives individualized, in-person support from staff trained in trauma-informed care, cultural reconnection, and behavioral stabilization. This approach addresses a critical gap often found in traditional group care by providing consistent, personalized, and culturally grounded support that prioritizes each youth’s emotional, cultural, and personal growth.
Support staff engage youth directly within their group home and in the community, extending care beyond institutional walls. They accompany youth to cultural events, community centers, gatherings, and land-based activities—creating safe, meaningful opportunities to build trust, connection, and identity. These experiences allow youth to engage with their culture in dynamic, living ways while fostering stability and a sense of belonging.
Each session also provides intentional respite from the group care environment, allowing youth to explore the world around them in empowering and culturally affirming ways. Every interaction is designed to nurture belonging, reinforce identity, and promote positive coping and life skills through community connection and experiential learning.
The Role of Personal Support Staff Includes:
- Advocacy: Representing and amplifying the youth’s voice during care meetings, case conferences, and planning sessions.
- Coordination: Maintaining consistent communication across agencies, caregivers, and professionals to align supports and services.
- Relational Continuity: Building and sustaining a trusted relationship that endures despite system transitions.
- Goal Support: Assisting youth in setting and achieving short- and long-term goals through personalized planning.
- Crisis and Emotional Support: Offering responsive guidance during challenges, ensuring youth always have a stable, caring connection.
This dedicated continuity guarantees that every youth has a familiar, reliable support figure who knows their story, understands their needs, and remains committed to walking with them every step of the way.
Youth & Caregiver portals
Youth Portal
The Youth Portal is designed to empower young people with 24/7 access to personalized, culturally grounded, and trauma-informed support. More than just a digital tool, it serves as a bridge that connects youth to consistency, care, and community, no matter where their journey takes them.
For many youth in care, constant transitions between homes, schools, and staff can lead to feelings of instability and loss of connection. The Youth Portal helps break that cycle by providing a steady foundation of support that remains accessible and familiar through every placement. Youth can stay connected to their mentors, continue working toward their personal goals, and retain the progress they have made, ensuring their story moves forward with every change.
Through interactive tools, learning activities, and real-time communication, youth gain the skills and confidence to take an active role in their own growth, healing, and future success. The portal fosters self-expression, builds emotional awareness, and strengthens relationships with supportive adults who understand their unique experiences.
Features Include:
- Cultural Connections: Engaging activities, stories, and resources that celebrate identity, heritage, and belonging, reinforcing pride in culture and self.
- Success Support: Interactive tools for learning, goal setting, and tracking personal achievements, promoting motivation and resilience.
- Daily Journal: A guided space for reflection, emotional expression, and self-awareness that helps youth recognize patterns, process experiences, and celebrate growth.
- Bi-Weekly Check-Ins: Regular virtual meetings that nurture accountability, consistency, and a trusted relationship between youth and their support staff.
- Support Messenger: Instant access to mentors and staff for encouragement, advice, and emotional support whenever it is needed.
By giving youth ownership of their development and consistent access to caring guidance, the Youth Portal transforms how support is experienced. It replaces disconnection with continuity, empowers self-discovery, and builds lasting confidence that extends far beyond the digital space.
Caregiver Portal
The Caregiver Portal equips group home staff with the tools, insight, and confidence to provide trauma-informed, culturally responsive care. Designed to strengthen continuity and stability, this model directly addresses one of the greatest challenges faced in residential care: the revolving door of placements and staff transitions that too often force youth to start over again and again.
Through real-time communication, progress tracking, and interactive training modules, the Caregiver Portal ensures that knowledge doesn’t disappear when staff change. Each new caregiver gains instant access to personalized insights about the youth they are supporting, including their routines, preferences, triggers, and effective rapport-building strategies.
This allows every staff member to build upon the successes of the previous team, learning from past experiences rather than repeating them. As a result, youth receive consistent, compassionate care that evolves with them throughout their journey, rather than resetting with each new placement.
Features Include:
- Cultural Understanding: Videos and resources that help caregivers honor and integrate each youth’s cultural identity into daily care.
- Success Support: Tools to understand triggers, trauma points, and personalized routines that foster stability and trust.
- Journal & Tracking: A shared record of observations, progress notes, and behavioral insights that ensures seamless coordination across staff teams.
- Bi-Weekly Check-Ins: Collaborative sessions that strengthen communication, address emerging needs, and promote consistency in care.
- Support Staff Messenger: Direct access to IYS support teams for real-time coaching, feedback, and solutions.
By preserving personalized knowledge and lived care experiences, the Caregiver Portal transforms transitions into opportunities for growth, ensuring every youth is understood, supported, and never again forced to start from zero.
Bring our kids home
Our Vision
The Return Home Initiative exists to ensure that every Indigenous youth in group care, foster care, or institutional placement has a genuine opportunity to return home surrounded by family, community, and culture.
For too long, youth have been caught in a system that disrupts identity, belonging, and hope. Many are moved repeatedly, separated from family, and placed in environments that unintentionally distance them from who they are. The Return Home Initiative changes this story by creating a model that centers on reconnection, cultural restoration, and lasting relationships. We meet youth where they are and walk beside them as they find their way back to where they belong.
What We Support
Cultural Reconnection: Youth engage in land-based learning, mentorship from Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and cultural activities that rebuild connection to identity, language, and heritage.
Consistency: Through our hybrid support model that includes both in-person and virtual connections via CareLink, youth maintain consistent relationships with their mentors and support staff, even as placements or care teams change.
Collaborative Planning: Each youth’s return home is planned together with caregivers, social workers, community members, and the youth themselves. Every plan is rooted in trust, strength, and cultural alignment.
Transition-Ready Support: Youth are prepared to move forward safely and confidently into family and community settings, with emotional, cultural, and practical supports established before transition begins.
Why This Matters
When youth must start over with every new placement, they lose more than progress; they lose trust, stability, and a sense of who they are. Our model ensures that the transfer of knowledge, understanding, and relationship continues through every stage of care. Staff and caregivers gain access to individualized insight, including each youth’s strengths, routines, triggers, and preferred approaches. This allows each team to build upon previous success, learn from past challenges, and provide care that feels familiar, compassionate, and continuous.
This consistency builds trust. It turns instability into predictability and ensures that every youth feels seen, understood, and supported as they prepare to return home.
Our Vision
We envision a future where Indigenous youth no longer age out of care disconnected or uncertain, but instead return home empowered, confident, and proud of who they are. We believe in a care system that uplifts rather than confines, restores rather than replaces, and listens deeply to the voices of those it serves.
Join Us in restoring Our Communities
Every child deserves to grow up surrounded by love, family, and belonging. The Return Home Initiative is more than a service; it is a movement toward healing, reconciliation, and restoration. We invite social workers, caregivers, agencies, and community leaders to walk with us in creating lasting change.
Together, we can bring Indigenous youth home, strengthen families, and build communities where every young person can thrive, grounded in identity, supported by culture, and surrounded by care.