For many youth living in the residential care and foster care community one of the most challenging times is the transition into independent living. Currently, foster care is not structured to provide the supports many youth need as they establish themselves in an apartment or other living situation. The Life Skills program is a required prerequisite for youth under DCF care to live independently prior to their 18th birthday.

Since 1988 St. Francis Home has offered a program intended to assist youth from the New Haven area who are preparing to live independently for success in that venture. The goal is to assist youth with few, if any, family resources and supports and who are in out-of-home placements in the DCF system. Youth are recruited from foster homes in the New Haven area and the residential community at St. Francis Home to enter into one of two annual sessions in which the youth are challenged to address a wide variety of potential obstacles to their success in independent living.

The program's curriculum includes: employment skills (seeking, keeping and leaving a job); money management (banking, budgeting, smart consumerism, etc.); home management (finding a home of your own, setting it up and maintaining it); drug and alcohol awareness and substance abuse prevention; the appropriate expression of feelings and emotions; and a current events component intended to keep the youth participants plugged into the world and the many issues that impact their lives.

In addition to staff from St. Francis Home, instructors in the Life-Skills program include bankers, employment counselors and others with first-hand knowledge and experience. The goal is to have the youth meet people who have been successful, and who can serve as role models.

The school year term (October to April) meets for two hours once a week, and every other week there is a second session. The summer session (May to August) meets three times a week.

The program coordinator is available as a resource to the youth once they establish their independent living situation.