Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
8 Government Investments in Marginalized Young Adults
8 Government Investments in Marginalized Young Adults
Pages 347-400
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From page 347... ...
• A comprehensive view of populations of marginalized young adults is lacking, which limits the development of policies and programs intended to reduce their marginalization. • Fragmented programs have narrow and idiosyncratic eligibility criteria that pose obstacles to young adults' getting the help 347
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From page 348... ...
hibit characteristics that put them at risk for poor outcomes during young adulthood as marginalized young adults, whether or not they are cur rently served by government programs. Our use of this term is informed by the concept of social exclusion, a concept *
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From page 349... ...
, these programs explicitly target young adults as a distinct population in need of special assistance; other programs (e.g., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] , the criminal justice system)
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From page 350... ...
. Our choices for discussion in this chapter are intended to highlight the following kinds of populations and programs: • marginalized populations that include a relatively large number of young adults; • marginalized populations that are the target of relatively large government investments; and • programs that help illustrate important between-program distinc tions (e.g., between entitlement programs and those with annual appropriations, between federally administered programs and those left largely to state and local administration)
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From page 351... ...
The final section presents conclusions and recommendations. YOUNG ADULTS AGING OUT OF FOSTER CARE An understanding of the conditions of young people transitioning out of foster care to adulthood requires an understanding of the overall purposes of the foster care system.1 State child welfare programs are operated under federal policies found in Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act, with Title IV-E providing federal reimbursement to states for a significant portion of the costs for children in foster care (SSA, 2014)
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From page 352... ...
Characteristics of Young Adults Aging Out of Foster Care Research on the health and well-being of current and former foster youth during young adulthood is limited. Nevertheless, studies conducted over the past two decades provide a fairly consistent picture, offering somber evidence of the difficulty of transitioning to adulthood for former foster youth: 4 The terms "emancipation" and "discharge to independent living" are not the same as "legally emancipated minor," which typically describes an individual under age 18 who has been rendered legally independent of control by parents and courts.
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From page 353... ...
. Programs for Young Adults Aging Out of Foster Care Current federal policy provides several sources of support for youth transitioning to adulthood from foster care: funding for independent living services, education and training vouchers to support postsecondary education for foster youth up to age 23, health insurance through the Medicaid program up to age 26, and partial reimbursement to states for continuation of foster care up to age 21.
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From page 354... ...
each youth receiving independent living services through the state agency that administers the CFCIP, and (2) transition outcomes from program-eligible foster youth cohorts at ages 17, 19, and 21.
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. In addition, the Fostering Connections Act requires child welfare agencies to help youth and young adults aged 18-21 develop a personalized transition plan during the 90 days immediately before they exit from care between ages 18 and 21.
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From page 356... ...
sponsored the MultiSite Evaluation of Foster Youth Programs, which is part of the evaluation research on independent living programs funded by the CFCIP.6 This study involved experimental evaluations of classroom-based life skills training, tutoring, employment support, and intensive case management programs for foster youth. Of the four programs evaluated, only the intensive case management program was found to have positive impacts, most notably on youths' enrollment and persistence in college.
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From page 357... ...
. In addition, 8,875 young adults aged 18-20 were in residential placements operated by the juvenile justice system in 2011 (Sickmund et al., 2013)
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From page 358... ...
. Moreover, studies of state and federal corrections facilities in 2004 and local jails in 2002 found that an estimated 62.6 percent of individuals in state prisons, 57.8 percent of those in federal prisons, and 70.3 percent of those in county jails had a mental health problem (James and Glaze, 2006)
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From page 359... ...
GOVERNMENT INVESTMENTS IN MARGINALIZED YOUNG ADULTS 359 FIGURE 8-1 The age-crime curve. SOURCE: Steinberg, 2013, reprinted with permission.
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From page 360... ...
However, young adults can in some states remain under the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts past the age of 18, and young people can in some places enter the adult criminal justice system as minors. In most states, for example, juvenile courts can retain authority over youth for dispositional purposes in delinquency matters until age 20, and in 4 states this authority extends through age 24 (OJJDP, 2013a)
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From page 361... ...
The majority of federal programs for justice-involved young adults serve them either alongside adolescents in the juvenile justice system or alongside the general adult population in the criminal justice system. In both of the latter cases, there are virtually no data on what proportion of the population served are young adults or on program effectiveness and outcomes specifically for this age group.
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From page 362... ...
. The youthful offenders program targets youth and young adults aged 14-24 who have been involved in the juvenile justice system but not the adult criminal justice system, and in some cases limits participation to those aged 18-24.
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From page 363... ...
The program is intended to place young people in college, jobs, or both at program exit. A participant must be aged 16-24 at entrance, and at least 75 percent of participants in a YouthBuild site must have dropped out of high school and belong to one of the program's target populations, which include • youthful offenders, • adult offenders, • current and former foster youth, • youth with disabilities, • migrant farm worker youth, • children with an incarcerated parent, and • low-income youth.
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Lastly, various federal programs serve adults in the criminal justice
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From page 365... ...
Department of Justice programs such as the Second Chance Act Prisoner Reentry Initiative and the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. The Second Chance Act Prisoner Reentry Initiative provides funding for "state, tribal, and local reentry courts; family-based substance abuse treatment; evaluate and improve education at prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities; technology careers training demonstration grants; offender reentry substance abuse and criminal justice collaboration; adult and juvenile demonstration; [and]
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From page 366... ...
This generality across the major age divide in juvenile and criminal justice implies that such programs should be effective with young adult offenders as well" (Welsh et al., 2013, p.
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From page 367... ...
. Although many studies of homeless youth include both minors and young adults and rely on convenience samples or samples drawn from local populations of service recipients, the available research supports the following general conclusions regarding the vulnerability experienced by homeless young people (see, e.g., Burt et al., 1999; Hagan and McCarthy, 2005; Toro et al., 2007; Whitbeck, 2009)
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From page 368... ...
. BCP centers were designed to offer these services outside of the law 7 For more information about the Runaway and Homeless Youth Program, see the ACF program website: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb/programs/runaway-homeless-youth/ about (accessed October 22, 2014)
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From page 369... ...
African Americans and Native Americans were overrepresented among the youth served relative to their proportions of the general population. According to data from the Runaway and Homeless Youth Management Information System, or RHYMIS, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning youth make up about 6-7 percent of BCP-served youth, although program providers believe these figures may understate the prevalence of sexual minority youth served by their programs (ACF, 2013a)
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From page 370... ...
Federally funded programs for which at least some homeless young adults are eligible include Continuum of Care programs; the Emergency Shelter Grants program; the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program; Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing; the Community Development Block Grants program; the Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8, for which youth aging out of foster care are a targeted population under the Family Unification Program) ; the Public Housing program; and Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities.
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. 8 Almost all evaluation research on homeless youth has focused exclusively or primarily on homeless minors rather than homeless young adults.
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From page 372... ...
The TANF block grant provides states funding with which to design and operate programs that accomplish one of the following four purposes: • provide assistance to needy families so children can be cared for in their own homes; • reduce the reliance of needy parents on public aid by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; 9 Singlemothers accounted for 95 percent of all single parents under age 25 in 2012 (Vespa et al., 2013)
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. A survey of state child welfare agencies found that TANF funds accounted for 20 percent of total federal, state, and local expenditures on child welfare programs in FY 2004 (Scarcella et al., 2006)
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Despite the work requirements that limit SNAP assistance for adults without children, young adults make up a significant proportion of SNAP beneficiaries. In 2011, an average of 4.3 million low-income young adults aged 18-24 received SNAP benefits each month (Lower-Basch, 2013)
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From page 375... ...
This means that outcomes generally were measured when the employment rate of young adults was quite different from what it has been in recent years and before the program's federal work requirements were significantly revised. Second, much of the research on TANF considers how replacing the individual entitlement to cash assistance in place prior to 1996 with today's work-based welfare program has influenced such outcomes as parental employment, earnings and poverty, material hardship, and child well-being.
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From page 376... ...
, TANF differs from a classic means-tested cash assistance program because of the potential work incentives provided by its work requirements and time limits. Unfortunately, there have been no studies of the labor supply effects of the current TANF program in terms of its impact on the hours current recipients would work in the program's absence (Ben-Shalom et al., 2011)
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. In addition, while not a government program per se, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
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.11 Members of first and second generations accounted for half of the population growth in the nation's youth and young adults aged 16-26 between 1995 and 2010 and accounted for 30 percent of all low-income youth in that age group in 2010 (Batalova and Fix, 2011)
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From page 379... ...
. Most important, the legal status of many first-generation young adults puts them at high risk of marginalization since they are unlikely to have citizenship or lawfully permanent resident status, making them unauthorized immigrants.12 Figure 8-2 shows that young adult immigrants are only about half as likely to be naturalized citizens relative to immigrants as a whole, but they are half again as likely as other immigrants to be unauthorized.
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From page 380... ...
While some states operate programs for unauthorized immigrants, these young adults are ineligible for major means-tested public benefit programs, including TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid, and virtually all other federally supported benefits, except for K-12 education, free and reduced-price lunches, and emergency health care (Fix, 2009; Fortuny and Chaudry, 2011)
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From page 381... ...
For example, young people in the corrections system often spent time in foster care, young people in the corrections system fre quently have mental health disorders, many former foster youth have disabilities and/or receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) , young TANF recipients often have contact with child protective services, many homeless young adults have had experience with the child welfare and corrections systems, and many homeless youth are parents.
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From page 382... ...
• For a variety of reasons, most programs that serve marginalized young adults fall far short of serving the entire population eligible for assistance. In some cases (e.g., homeless youth services)
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impose restrictions on eligibility that significantly limit access. Nonentitlement programs serving young adults typically have complex and restrictive eligibility requirements and are severely underfunded.
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We now turn to recommendations for future research and government investments to help increase the likelihood that all young adults will participate fully in society. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS We recommend a series of interrelated actions by federal, state, and local governments to help develop understanding of the characteristics of marginalized young adults and improve policies and programs intended to reduce their marginalization.
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From page 385... ...
This guidance is intended to help in the criminal justice program and statistical agencies, in system, it is hell to get cluding evaluation and policy analysis all the data that was units, make greater use of administra in the foster care system tive data while respecting individuals' to that other system so privacy and protecting confidentiality. that they understand Maximizing the use of administrative what the young person data to better understand marginalized went through, the youth populations ultimately will re services he needed, and quire collaboration between state and whether or not he needs local government agencies since many them again." programs serving marginalized young adults are operated at these two levels.
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From page 386... ...
Recommendation 8-2: Federal and state governments should continue encouraging programs that serve marginalized populations to make better use of administrative data for describing the overlap of popula tions across service systems and young adults' trajectories into and out 14 For a description of the Chapin Hall database, see http://www.chapinhall.org/about/ looking-across-systems-need-collaboration (accessed October 22, 2014)
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From page 387... ...
Depart ments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, and Education -- and philanthropic funders should fund demonstration projects at the state level to support states in integrating program administrative data to better under stand marginalized young adults and evaluate programs serving them. • State government agencies serving marginalized young adults should expand on existing state and local efforts to integrate and use administrative data to better understand and serve these young adults.
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From page 388... ...
. The Shared Youth Vision Partnership facilitated the development of model program coordination strategies, youth assessment tools, and outcome indicators, as well as several pilot state and local planning efforts, but none of these were rigorously evaluated in a manner that could identify their impact on youth outcomes (Abt Associates, 2009)
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From page 389... ...
U.S. society has long used social programs to experiment with the lives of marginalized young adults, but little has been learned from 15 For more information about the Performance Partnerships for Disconnected Youth, see http://www.ed.gov/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014-PPPs-Fact-Sheet.pdf (accessed October 22, 2014)
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From page 390... ...
That the evidence needed to justify major government investments in programs for marginalized young adults is lacking is likely more the result of a failure to rigorously evaluate the impacts of current investments than proof of the futility of trying to help these young people. The following steps should be taken by the federal and state governments to improve the coordination and effectiveness of services for marginalized young adults.
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From page 391... ...
Either approach would represent a shift away from costly, disjointed, and ineffective collection of data on the outputs of multiple programs toward an information infrastructure capable of measuring the effects of government investments on the health and well-being of marginalized young adults. Comparable data on key outcomes would be collected across all marginalized young adults served.
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From page 392... ...
2013a. Report to Congress on the runaway and homeless youth programs: Fiscal years 2010 and 2011.
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2010. Laboratory-diagnosed sexually transmitted infections in former foster youth compared with peers.
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2010. Midwest evaluation of the adult functioning of former foster youth: Outcomes at age 23 and 24.
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2014b. Catalog of federal domestic assistance: Juvenile accountability block grants.
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2007. Homelessness and health care access after emancipation: Results from the Midwest evaluation of adult functioning of former foster youth.
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Journal of Public Child Welfare 6(3)
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2013c. Overview of the DCTAT data for Juvenile Accountability Block Grants Pro gram.
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2006. The cost of protecting vulner able children V: Understanding state variation in child welfare financing.
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2014b. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation and costs (data as of March 7, 2014)
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