Dual System Youth and their Pathways: A Comparison of Incidence, Characteristics and System Experiences using Linked Administrative Data.

Insight into the characteristics and system experiences for youth who touch both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems has increased over the last decade. These youth are typically studied as one population and referred to as "crossover youth." While this literature contributes valuable insight into who crossover youth are, studies are virtually silent on distinguishing characteristics and experiences across different pathways leading to dual system contact. This study reviews what is currently known about dual system youth generally (i.e., youth who have contact with both the juvenile justice and child welfare systems) and introduces a framework for consistently defining dual system youth and their pathways. The utility of the framework is then explored using linked administrative data for cohorts of youth aged 10 to 18 years old with a first petition to delinquency court in three sites: Cook County, Illinois between 2010 and 2014 (N = 14,170); Cuyahoga County, Ohio between 2010 and 2014 (N = 11,441); and New York City between 2013 and 2014 (N = 1272). The findings show a high prevalence of dual system contact overall, ranging from 44.8 to 70.3%, as well as wide variation in the ways in which youth touched both systems. Specifically, non-concurrent system contact is more prevalent than concurrent system contact in all sites, and individual characteristics and system experiences vary within and across these different pathway groups. Based on study findings, implications for future research on dual system youth and for developing collaborative practices and policies across the systems are discussed.

Understanding Vulnerable Families in Multiple Service Systems Understanding Vulnerable Families.

We analyze Illinois families facing multiple barriers and their interactions with public-sector services. Using administrative data from five state agencies to identify families' receipt of child welfare, mental health, and substance abuse services as well as adult and juvenile incarcerations, we identify individuals across systems using probabilistic record-linkage techniques, defining family clusters based on networks of individuals who share child welfare and food stamp cases. We show that 23 percent receive services in two or more of these areas. This concentration accounts for 86 percent of the funding for these services used by the entire sample. They experience more and more severe problems. This population is otherwise heterogeneous, engaging with different types of services and clustered in certain parts of the state.

Neighborhood-level social processes and substantiated cases of child maltreatment.

Child maltreatment is a preventable public health problem. Research has demonstrated that neighborhood structural factors (e.g. poverty, crime) can influence the proportion of a neighborhood's children who are victims of maltreatment. A newer strategy is the identification of potentially modifiable social processes at the neighborhood level that can also influence maltreatment. Toward this end, this study examines neighborhood-level data (maltreatment cases substantiated by Illinois' child protection agency, 1995-2005, social processes measured by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, U.S. Census data, proportions of neighborhoods on public assistance, and crime data) that were linked across clusters of contiguous, relatively homogenous Chicago, IL census tracts with respect to racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition. Our analysis-an ecological-level, repeated cross-sectional design utilizing random-intercept logit models-with a sensitivity analysis using spatial models to control for spatial autocorrelation-revealed consistent associations between neighborhood social processes and maltreatment. Neighborhoods higher in collective efficacy, intergenerational closure, and social networks, and lower in disorder had lower proportions of neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse substantiated cases, controlling for differences in structural factors. Higher collective efficacy and social network size also predicted a lower proportion of substance-exposed infants. This research indicates that strategies to mobilize neighborhood-level protective factors may decrease child maltreatment more effectively than individual and family-focused efforts alone.

Improving access to health care for foster children: the Illinois model.

Children in foster care have lower health status than do their peers and limited access to health care. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services developed HealthWorks, a separate primary care preferred provider system for children in foster care. This study compared claims data for children in HealthWorks with children not enrolled in HealthWorks and with children in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) who had never entered foster care. Children enrolled in HealthWorks were more likely than were other children to receive all of the services except general inpatient hospitalizations. They had greater odds of receiving general exams and physicians' services and were more likely to visit the emergency room than children who were not enrolled. They were more likely to receive all of the measured services when compared with children receiving Medicaid through AFDC.