1. Contributor Guidelines

Contributions should improve accuracy, clarity, usefulness, inclusion, or understanding. Contributors must submit their own work, represent their experience and qualifications honestly, and provide enough context for reviewers to evaluate the submission.

• Do not plagiarize or submit material you do not have permission to share.
• Do not use contributions to advertise, recruit clients, solicit donations, or promote an agency, product, or political position.
• Do not impersonate another person or misrepresent professional credentials.
• Do not include threats, harassment, discrimination, or accusations about identifiable people.
• Foster Care Central may edit for accuracy, privacy, length, clarity, tone, and consistency.

2. State Guide Source Policy

Proposed factual changes must cite a source that directly supports the proposed wording. The contributor bears responsibility for identifying the source and relevant passage.

Preferred sources

1. Official state agency websites, manuals, forms, regulations, statutes, and published policy.
2. Federal agencies and federally supported child-welfare resources.
3. Official county or contracted licensing organizations when they administer the applicable process.
4. Established nonprofit or professional organizations only when primary sources are unavailable and the claim is clearly attributed.

Normally insufficient by themselves

Personal experience, social-media posts, forums, search-result summaries, AI-generated answers, promotional pages, and unsourced secondary articles may identify a question but do not establish a statewide requirement.

Rules that differ by county, tribe, private agency, placement type, or licensing track must be labeled with that scope. Reviewers may reject a technically accurate source when it does not support the wording or jurisdiction claimed.

3. Advice and Privacy Policy

Advice is lived experience, not official policy or individualized professional guidance. Contributors must remove information that could identify a child, parent, caregiver, case, or other private person.

Never submit

• Names, initials, photographs, exact ages combined with location, addresses, schools, case numbers, court dates, or placement dates.
• Private medical, mental-health, disability, educational, immigration, abuse, criminal, or family-history details.
• Confidential court, agency, case-plan, placement, or investigation information.
• Allegations or criticism that could identify a child, family, caseworker, judge, provider, agency employee, or caregiver.
• Instructions that replace a caseworker, licensing agency, attorney, physician, therapist, or emergency service.

Reviewers may generalize or remove details even when the contributor believes they are anonymous. Content suggesting immediate danger, abuse, or a reportable concern is not handled as an emergency-reporting channel.

4. Data Retention

Private submissions are encrypted and retained only as long as needed for review, publication, safety, and accountability. Rejected submissions are deleted 30 days after rejection. Pending, reviewing, or needs-changes submissions are deleted after 180 days without an update. Approved submissions are retained until the publishing process is complete, then archived source submissions are deleted after 90 days.

Short-lived, one-way network identifiers used for rate limiting are deleted after 48 hours. Sanitized public revisions may be retained as part of the site's editorial history, but private email addresses and unpublished contributor details are not included in that public history. Encrypted disaster-recovery backups expire within 90 days, so deleted records may remain in protected backups until those backups age out.

To request earlier deletion of an unpublished submission, use the site's contact channel and include the submission reference when available. Never send private case details in a deletion request.

5. Conflict-of-Interest Policy

Contributors and reviewers must disclose relationships that could influence a submission, including employment, contracts, leadership roles, financial interests, advocacy campaigns, litigation, or close personal involvement.

An agency employee may suggest a correction about that agency, but the relationship must be disclosed and an independent reviewer must approve publication. Promotional links, undisclosed paid contributions, and edits intended primarily to benefit the contributor or an affiliated organization may be rejected.

6. Editorial Review Policy

Submissions remain private and unpublished until approved. Reviewers may approve, revise, request clarification, reject, or defer a submission.

• State-guide changes require verification against the cited source and, when needed, a second authoritative source.
• High-impact changes involving eligibility, disqualification, money, legal rights, safety, or medical matters receive heightened review.
• Advice receives privacy, safety, tone, relevance, and clarity review.
• Reviewers should recuse themselves when they have a material conflict.
• Editorial decisions and published changes will be recorded in a revision history.

Foster Care Central retains final editorial control. Publication is discretionary and is not guaranteed by accuracy, contributor status, popularity, or prior publication.

7. Attribution and Content License

Contributors may request attribution by a display name, role, or “Anonymous contributor.” Private contact information will not be displayed merely because attribution is requested.

Before public submissions open, contributors will be required to confirm that they own or have permission to submit the material and grant Foster Care Central a nonexclusive, worldwide right to review, edit, reproduce, publish, archive, and remove the contribution. The final public license and contributor terms require legal review before launch.

8. Community Code of Conduct

Participate with respect for foster youth, parents, relatives, caregivers, professionals, and people whose experiences differ from yours. Critique information and practices without attacking people.

• No harassment, hate speech, demeaning stereotypes, threats, doxxing, retaliation, or sexual content involving minors.
• No shaming children, birth families, foster families, kinship caregivers, adoptees, or former foster youth.
• No pressure to disclose trauma, credentials, diagnoses, legal status, or personal identity publicly.
• No manipulation of voting, reviews, attribution, or contributor reputation.

Foster Care Central may restrict or end participation when conduct threatens safety, privacy, trust, or the integrity of the review process.

9. Corrections and Appeals

Anyone may report a factual error or privacy concern. Urgent privacy or safety concerns should receive priority review. Published material may be corrected, temporarily hidden, or removed while it is investigated.

Contributors may ask for the reason a submission was rejected and may resubmit with better sourcing or privacy protections. Repeated resubmission does not guarantee publication. A separate reviewer should handle an appeal when practical.