Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Foster Care in Juvenile Justice: A Look at Incidence, Outcomes and System Responses

(Family and Child Policy)

Youth who are dually involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice system present a particular challenge to both systems due to their often intertwined and complex needs. However, they also present an opportunity for more upstream prevention programming and coordination. Nationally, there is no reliable estimate about the size of this population or consistent method to estimate it. To facilitate a better understanding of this population, in 2015, the US Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention awarded the Dual System Youth Study to California State University, Los Angeles and a team of researchers across the US.  The purpose of this roundtable discussion is to provide background for this study, highlight key findings from the study, and engage in a discussion regarding the ways in which these findings inform future policy, practice, and research efforts.

The first set of presentations will focus on the first aim of the grant: to propose a methodology to estimate a national incidence rate of youth who touch both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems through the analyses of administrative data from the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Research partners identified a juvenile justice cohort for Cook County, Illinois; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and New York City and then matched these cases to those in child welfare data to identify which youth had touched the child welfare system.  This process led to critical insights into the incidence of dual system involvement and the various pathways in which it occurs. Presentations will also include key characteristics of these youth, variations of the incidence and characteristics based on the use of different definitions, and a limited number of outcomes into young adulthood. 

The second set of presentations will discuss the grant’s second goal: to propose a methodology for assessing best practices used by systems to integrate their practices. This will include analyses from a group of practitioners and researchers about the implementation of Georgetown University’s Center for Juvenile Justice Reform’s Crossover Youth Practice Model (CYPM) to address these goals.  Research and practitioner partners also analyzed CYPM data to identify common characteristics of integrated systems work across jurisdictions. From this work, a rubric of integrated systems practice was developed to help jurisdictions determine their level of development in this area.