Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Large numbers of young people are involved in foster care or juvenile justice custody as teenagers, and many of these youth have a difficult time making a successful transition to adulthood as they leave these systems. Each year in the United States, about 65,000 teenagers and young adults leave foster care and nearly 100,000 youths leave juvenile justice custody. Compared with others their age, these young people have relatively low levels of educational attainment and employment, and they are more likely to experience poverty and housing instability. While the availability of programs designed to serve these populations has expanded, there is little rigorous evidence showing which of these services are effective and for whom.

The Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation, conducted by MDRC, along with Mark Courtney from the University of Chicago, is testing the impacts of the Transitional Living program, an independent living program designed to improve a wide range of outcomes for young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice custody. This evaluation is one of the largest, most rigorous evaluations to test the effectiveness of a program serving this population of young adults. The evaluation is using a random assignment research design. About 1,300 eligible youth were assigned, at random, to a program group, which was offered Transitional Living services, or to a control group, which was not offered those services. Data collected for both groups include a one-year survey, with an 84 percent response rate, and two years of administrative data on employment and earnings, postsecondary school enrollment, and criminal involvement.

After one year, the Transitional Living program led to positive, significant impacts across a broad number of outcomes in three of six domains. Specifically, the program boosted earnings, increased housing stability and economic well-being, and improved some outcomes related to health and safety. While these results are promising, it is important to understand whether the program continues to improve outcomes in the longer term, when young people are no longer actively participating in the program.

This presentation focuses on results from a second year of follow-up, including the two-year impacts of Transitional Living on outcomes in three domains: education, employment and earnings, and criminal involvement. Results are mixed. While the program led to some significant impacts on employment and earnings during the second year of follow-up, significant impacts on education and criminal involvement did not emerge in this time frame. While these findings are not universally positive, they may not tell the whole story given that a second year of data is not available in two of the domains—housing stability and economic well-being, and health and safety—in which there were positive one-year impacts. Regardless, these results are important given the scarcity of positive findings, and evidence in general, for programs serving young adults with histories of foster care and juvenile justice involvement. In addition to situating the two-year impact findings within the research base in this area, the presentation will describe policy implications and provide information about program costs.