Mentoring, employment assistance, and enhanced staff outreach for older youth in care: Outcomes from a randomized controlled trial

Sonya J. Leathers, Casey Holtschneider, Melissa Ludington, Ellen V. Ross and James L. Barnett

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 153, issue C

Abstract: Youth who exit out-of-home care to live on their own face high risks for homelessness, unemployment, and incarceration. Federal support for the extension of services after age 18 provides the opportunity to better support youth in early adulthood, but to fully realize this potential requires the development of services with demonstrated positive impacts. This study contributes to the limited methodologically strong research in this area in a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of job readiness training, mentoring, and enhanced outreach by a youth specialist in an urban sample of youth (N = 152, 82% Black). Youth were interviewed at baseline when they were 17–20 years old and 14 months later to assess youth outcomes including employment, school enrollment, delinquency, and depression. Those randomized to receive enhanced services all received regular outreach from a youth specialist and could choose to participate in a mentoring and job readiness programs. Although less than a third of eligible youth fully completed either formal program, youth in the enhanced services condition had significantly fewer arrests, lower delinquency, and increased hours of employment. These outcomes were unrelated to changes in social support needs, counter to expectations. Future research is needed to build on these findings and those from other programs with positive effects in other areas such as educational outcomes to create effective service systems for older youth in care.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740923002906
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:153:y:2023:i:c:s0190740923002906

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107095

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().