Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth Youth participation in foster youth advisory boards: Perspectives of facilitators Judy Havlicek a, ⁎ , Ashley Curry b , Fabiola Villalpando c a University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, United States b Erikson Institute, Chicago, IL, United States c Loyola University, Chicago, IL, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Foster youth advisory boards Youth participation Foster youth Child welfare ABSTRACT Foster youth advisory boards (YAB) have the objective of promoting foster youth participation in decisions that are made about their lives. There is currently little known about how youth participation is conceptualized or implemented within or across boards. This qualitative study explored youth participation from the perspectives of 42 primary YAB facilitators in 34 states. The study's findings are derived from telephone interviews. A the- matic analysis identified four primary approaches to youth participation, which we labeled as being, ‘Adult-Led’ (n = 2); ‘Adult-Driven Youth Input’ (n = 14); ‘50–50 Youth-Adult Partnership’ (n = 16); and ‘Youth-Led’ (n = 2). Within each of these approaches to youth participation, we present findings that explore facilitators' conceptualizations of youth participation, the strategies and program activities they use to enact youth parti- cipation, and the strengths and limitations of each of the approaches. Our discussion explores implications for YAB program activities, youth participation in child welfare systems, and future research. 1. Introduction Foster youth advisory boards in the United States have the objective of promoting foster youth participation in decisions that are made about their lives. The mission statement of the Missouri State Youth Advisory Board includes the goal of “empowering youth to provide input into the policies and procedures in out-of-home care.” Similarly, the mission statement of New Mexico's Leaders Uniting Voices Youth Advocates (LUVYA) is to, “collaborate with others to develop in- novative alternatives to existing and potential problems facing foster youth.” In a recent study of 47 foster youth advisory boards in the United States, 83% of facilitators reported using a youth-adult part- nership approach to youth participation where state and private child welfare agency facilitators strive to partner with youth and create op- portunities to share decision-making (Havlicek, Lin, & Villalpando, 2016). Because youth participation requires the involvement of foster youth in ways that may challenge existing child welfare policy frame- works (Propp, Ortega, & NewHeart, 2003) and professionally-driven practice approaches (Krebs, Pitcoff, & Shalof, 2013; McGowan, 2005), an important task of research is to expand our understanding of the ways that child welfare professionals make meaning of foster youth participation, and the strategies that are used to anticipate and/or overcome challenges. Youth participation is defined as a process of involving young people in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives (Checkoway, 2011; Checkoway & Guitierrez, 2006). In the field of so- cial work, it is most commonly used in conjunction with engagement (Pritzker & Richards-Schuster, 2016) whereas in other fields, such as community psychology, youth participation is interchanged with em- powerment and social inclusion (Morsillo & Prilleltensky, 2007). Out- side of the United States, and in countries that have ratified the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, youth participation is defined as a human right (Villa-Torres & Svanemyr, 2015). This suggests that youth participation represents a broad construct that en- compasses multiple forms ranging from the involvement of young people in organized program activities, such as sports (Perkins et al., 2007; Tiffany, Exner-Cortens, & Eckenrode, 2012) to the inclusion of young people's voices in communities and systems in which they are not traditionally heard (Flanagan & Christens, 2011; Ginwright, 2011). Such engagement is theorized to prevent broader societal disen- franchisement of marginalized adolescents and young adults (Checkoway & Richards-Schuster, 2002; Perkins et al., 2007; Tiffany et al., 2012). Collins (2004), in a review of the implementation of independent living policy and child welfare services for adolescents in the United States (U.S.) suggests that foster youth advisory boards represent the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.12.016 Received 29 September 2017; Received in revised form 13 December 2017; Accepted 13 December 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: jhavlice@illinois.edu (J. Havlicek). Children and Youth Services Review 84 (2018) 255–270 Available online 14 December 2017 0190-7409/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T