Not every young person is lucky enough to enjoy the support of a functional family or social network, and many depend on the state in some capacity to help develop the skills necessary for achieving professional success and personal stability. Out of the approximately 24 million adolescents in the US, a substantial portion will be involved in one of more governmental system of care at some point during their transition to adulthood. This paper focused on two of those systems: child welfare and juvenile justice.

Youth aging out of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems have much in common. They share the negative developmental impact that the trauma they experienced has caused. They also share many of the same challenges, given their involvement in these systems generally indicates compromised social and family networks, networks that would normally help an adolescent establish pro-social coping mechanisms absent fully developed emotional or cognitive capacities. In many cases, out-of-home placement can exacerbate family and community tensions, making successful social integration as a young adult even more difficult. Sustained family and community relationships are important in providing critical support to a youth as he or she faces the challenges of young adulthood. Allowing youth to age out of either system without working to repair these relationships can inhibit a youth’s future success in employment, education, and financial matters. Vulnerable young people face even greater obstacles to success when they are involved in more than one system of care. Many maltreated youth cross over from the child welfare system into the juvenile justice and other systems of care.

Recognizing where the systems have fallen short in the past will help agency leaders and policymakers craft improvements for the future. A focus on youth known to multiple systems enables juvenile justice and child welfare professionals to learn from each other’s successes and failures. In the long run, targeted efforts to assist youth transitioning and aging out of the child welfare or juvenile justice systems, including crossover youth, will improve community safety and enable young people to become healthy, economically productive members of society.

The Desired Result: Successful Transitions to Adulthood by Age 25
Most young people will “make it” by age 25. That is, they will have achieved a level of education and training that will permit some measure of economic success, and they will have developed the social and relational skills necessary for being part of and raising a family. They will commonly have developed a web of connections with peers, colleagues, business associates, and friends. The large majority of these “emerging adults” will be connected by 25.

The population in danger of being disconnected is extremely diverse. But there are generally four subgroups commonly recognized as composing the vast majority of those at very high risk: high school dropouts, teen parents, youth emerging from the foster care system, and youth involved in the juvenile justice (and sometimes adult correctional) system. Overlap with these subgroups is tremendous: half of the youth who age out of foster care have not finished high school, and some youth are teen parents (Courtney & Dworsky, 2005). Connections to the labor force for these youth are often episodic or completely absent. 

In addition to overlap among these four populations, there is overlap in the conditions that lead to poor outcomes. Although not all disconnected youth have been taken from their families, many, if not most, lack the necessary family supports to sustain connection to school and make connections in the community. Most of these youth have in common their physical location in impoverished communities, poor educational opportunities, and a dearth of job prospects.

Researchers have concluded that the number of youth who are disconnected at 25 would be significantly reduced if child-serving systems – and their community and public partners – were able to help these youth finish high school, obtain additional credentials for employment, connect to the labor force, and create and maintain connections to their families and communities (Wald & Martinez, 2003). This research underscores the fact that virtually all youth not connected by age 25 begin the process of disconnection much earlier, often as early as age 14 (Wald & Martinez, 2003). Youth leaving the foster care system and youth in the juvenile justice system are at high risk of disconnection.

To better understand both the risks and the protective factors that disproportionately affect youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, it is important to understand the history, development, and workings of these systems.

Recommendations
In working with transition-age youth, practitioners, policymakers, and legislators must understand positive youth development and the importance of family and community support systems. The following recommendations are meant to guide policy, practice, and law so that interventions are developmentally appropriate. These changes in practice will enable agencies to optimize family, youth, and community strengths and create natural support systems that will outlast public agency involvement.

Statutory schemes differ among jurisdictions. Legislation that would provide adequate resources for supporting youth until they are successful adults is often not politically or financially feasible. Some of the following recommendations describe legislative fixes to problems identified in this paper, but most are meant to improve the quality of service to youth and coordination among agencies within existing statutory frameworks. By improving the ability to accurately assess needs and increasing the efficiency with which existing resources are mobilized to address these needs, jurisdictions can improve outcomes for transition-age youth across the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, regardless of the particulars of local law and legislation.

Recommendation 1: Promote policies and practices that address family relationships and permanency.
Young adults do best in functioning families. Practices that approach youth development and rehabilitation holistically by assessing both the strengths and the challenges in a youth’s family and community support system and then supporting a range of protective factors can help improve adult outcomes.

Promising practices in this area include:

• Targeted assessment to evaluate the strength and stability of family relationships.
• Individualized service provision for youth and their families.
• Connecting families to community-based support systems, including civic and faith-based organizations.

Recommendation 2: Engage youth to work with their case managers in formulating a plan that includes the goals they wish to achieve by age 25.
Allowing a youth to take the lead in formulating his or her own case plan increases the likelihood that the youth will stay engaged and comply with case requirements. Case managers should work with older youth as they identify their adulthood goals. Agencies across child welfare and juvenile justice should adhere to the spirit of the Chafee mandate by encouraging youth to participate in service design and delivery in a more expansive way. Effective youth engagement must be nurtured and must provide opportunities for experience.

Recommendation 3: Ensure that the services available to youth are developmentally appropriate.
Assessment and case planning are essential to the provision of developmentally appropriate services for transitioning youth. The value of a careful assessment cannot be overstated because it is the entry point for case planning in both juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Craft initial assessments to gauge the youth’s physical, emotional, educational, and vocational developmental status compared to other youths the same age. Create assessment tools that measure the youth’s development across factors that predict adulthood success. Target services to address developmental deficits. Limit the use of criminal transfer for juvenile justice youth. Change legislative and regulatory mandates.

Recommendation 4: Use federal funding to create programs for older youth and track their outcome.
Opportunities currently exist through federal funding streams to expand services for older youth and learn more about youth outcomes. Steps that can be taken include implementing the Fostering Connections Act and the National Youth in Transition Database as well as assisting service providers in obtaining funding to serve transitioning youth.

Recommendation 5: Develop policies and practices that support prevention and development of the specific skills and competencies necessary for adulthood success.
Youth need sufficient education and employment skills to become economically independent adults. Problems in either sphere may be exacerbated by unmet psychological or behavioral needs, but practices can be improved to prevent or remove the challenges agency-involved youth often face in their education and careers.

Juvenile justice practitioners and policymakers can implement a range of preventative and ameliorative practices, including:

• Solidify connections with education agencies to reduce educational interruption and dropout rates.
• Ensure that juvenile justice youth’s special educational needs are met.
• Collaborate with educators to reduce school referrals.
• Ensure that detained youth experience minimal educational interruption.

Child welfare practitioners and policymakers can also make changes to reduce educational failure among transition age youth. Many of these changes can be financed by making better, more efficient use of federal funding streams. These changes include:

• Fully implement the education provisions of the Fostering Connections Act.
• Use education-related funds available through the Chafee Act.

Practices both juvenile justice and child welfare can implement include:

• Create partnerships with community colleges and other local postsecondary institutions.
• Solidify connections with local employers.
• Change roles in group care settings to allow for employment.
• Plan for extended service provision after youth age out.

Recommendation 6: Strengthen collaboration between the juvenile justice and child welfare systems to efficiently target service provision and improve outcomes for crossover youth.
Our understanding of the needs of crossover youth as they transition to adulthood is growing. Practice reforms should be based on prevention as the first strategy in serving crossover youth. Practices should focus on positive youth development and normalcy, particularly for youth in congregate care settings.

A number of strategies can be implemented to advance these goals by strengthening collaboration between juvenile justice and child welfare including:

• Create information-sharing mechanisms to identify crossover youth.
• Allow child welfare to retain jurisdiction for dually adjudicated youth.
• Dedicate resources to support the collaboration between juvenile justice and child welfare.
• Align the supervision of juvenile justice and the provision of behavioral health services by child welfare with the public safety risk and the child safety and well-being needs of dual-jurisdiction youth.

Recommendation 7: Engage with the community to create broad support systems for transitioning youth.
Agencies can develop community resources that are able to support youth throughout their transition to adulthood. Creating connections among older youth, their families, and community stakeholders while the youth is still under an agency’s care can provide the foundation for permanency, help struggling families support their young adult, and enable the youth to feel community acceptance, thus facilitating his or her integration into adult society.

Agency professionals should:

• Work with existing social, civic, and faith-based organizations to increase public awareness of available agency services.
• Engage community members in procurement decisions.

Conclusions
Adapting these recommendations to local circumstances can help agencies prepare juvenile justice and child welfare youth for adulthood. By working collaboratively, child welfare and juvenile justice agencies can help each other overcome the social, financial, and political challenges standing in the way of meaningful reform. Conceiving of transition-age youth in the broader social context can help professionals identify the supports they must cultivate to ensure adulthood success. Beginning collaboration around the needs and strengths of crossover youth will not only improve joint efforts between systems, but also allow practitioners to recognize the cross-cutting needs in every youth struggling to mature into a successful adult. Through implementation of collaborative, developmentally appropriate, and youth-inclusive best practices, the cultural barriers that historically stymied a coordinated approach will begin to break down. Although meeting the challenges presented by transition-age youth seems daunting, acting decisively to do so will not only improve the lives of the young people we serve, but also improve the safety, cohesiveness, and productivity of their families and communities.

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