To improve self-sufficiency and employment outcomes, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) awarded grants to five states to build programs for youth exiting foster care. Each state—California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Texas—agreed to target their cities or counties with the largest number of youth in foster care: Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, and Houston. Each program takes a different approach, but each provides youth with academic services and support, preparation for and exposure to the workplace environment, skills development, coaching, and case management.
Evaluation partners
Casey Family Programs is cooperating with ETA, the Institute for Educational Leadership, and the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies on evaluating each of the five employment projects. The evaluators also hope to capture effective practices to disseminate throughout the workforce development and child welfare systems.
Reports
Foster Youth Demonstration Project: Final Evaluation Report (July 2008)
This report tracks educational and employment outcomes of youth from foster care who participated in one of five programs sponsored by the Department of Labor. It describes program participation and outcomes of over 1,000 youth from foster care in each of the five participating cities. Executive Summary | Full Report
Site Profiles (July 2008)
These reports describe the programs at each of the five sites, presenting data from the main evaluation report:
Report of Site Visits (March 2006)
This report contains the findings of the first round of site visits that were conducted during the period from late October through early December, 2005. It also incorporates the participant characteristics, activities, and outcomes data that were reported by the sites through the period ending September 2005. This report is intended to establish a baseline from which progress can be measured and summarized in a later report. Full Report