visit http://www.heysf.org

What is HEY?

Honoring Emancipated Youth (HEY) is a San Francisco-based intermediary providing leadership to the Bay Area foster care community by convening and informing stakeholders of trends and best practices in order to raise public awareness and promote successful policies that affect emancipated foster youth. At the core of its philosophy, HEY is committed to the inclusion of current and former foster youth, service providers, and supporters in identifying and promoting strategies and best practices that ensure there are effective and holistic systems to serve foster care youth in achieving a healthy transition into adulthood.

Our History
HEY was started by United Way of the Bay Area in 1999 as a community-based, collaborative response to the challenges facing youth who emancipate, or age out, of the foster care system.

Originally our work was mainly focused on advocating for the housing needs of these youth – in fact we were originally called Housing for Emancipated Youth – but since then we have recognized the network of support necessary for youth and young adults to become self sufficient. Our work has now grown to include advocacy for education, health, employment AND housing.

Our Mission
HEY’s mission is to strengthen and connect San Francisco’s systems of support for Bay Area foster care youth so that all youth emancipating or aging out of the foster care system can enjoy a healthy transition to adulthood.

HEY is the one organization in San Francisco that works specifically towards the strengthening of systems of service for emancipated foster care youth across sectors. We work to support a variety of solutions to the issues facing foster youth aging out of the system with a focus on housing, employment, education, and health care. We do this by:

• Serving as an information hub for the local community on current and former foster care youth issues
• Identifying issues and trends and advocating for policy alignment in order to promote best practices
• Convening stakeholders and providers and providing ongoing training and networking opportunities
• Raising public awareness and developing education materials for all community members