Family Preservation Opinion: Intensive Home Care Option

This opinion piece discusses the poor life success results of former US foster care alumni. Chapin Hall at University of Chicago published a study in 2010 called The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (Midwest Study). It is a prospective study that has been following a sample of young people from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois as they transition out of foster care into adulthood. Data was collected at age 17 or 18; 19;21; 23 or 24. A last data point is yet to be collected at age 24 to 25. The study can be found here:

The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth

The average foster care youth is placed in three homes and two-thirds have seven different school changes. This leads to fewer than half holding down a job by age 23 to 24. Nearly 60 percent of males had been convicted of a crime. Seventy-one percent of females had been pregnant by age 21.

The approach that organizations like The Youth Villages are taking provides intensive in-home care, also called Multisystemic Therapy (MST), to keep the child in the family. The Youth Villages works in 11 states and DC. They work closely with child welfare, mental health and juvenile justice systems. “This approach may seem counterintuitive, given that child welfare agencies intervene when courts deem parents unfit to care for their children. However, evidence indicates that intensive in-home services can bring substantial changes in families — and produce more successful outcomes than out-of-home models like foster homes or institutional care.”

The outcomes of the MST: “ [T]wo years after completing its in-home programs, 83 percent of youths served were living successfully in families, 85 percent were in school or had gained a high school or equivalency degree, and 82 percent reported no trouble with the law. Moreover, these services are less expensive than out-of-home care. In Massachusetts, for example, the average cost for Youth Villages’ four- to six-month Intercept program, which currently has a 78 percent success rate in the state, is $18,000 per youth. By contrast, one youth in residential care can cost the state more than $125,000 per year (the average length of a stay) — and the success rate is about 40 percent.”

A Families First Approach to Foster Care

[The New York Times 2/21/11 by David Bornstein]

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