2023 Evaluation Summary of the Foster Youth Strategic Initiative
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Foster Youth Initiative (Initiative) aims to ensure that all transition-age youth with foster care experience “lead healthy, meaningful, and choice-filled lives” through investments and partnerships in Atlanta, Los Angeles County (LA), and New York City (NYC), as well as nationally. Across its three geographies, the Initiative reaches approximately one in 10 youth ages 14-20 in foster care nationwide.[i] The Initiative’s strategy centers on foster youth themselves, caregivers (e.g., kinship caregivers and foster parents), national field building, and research and evaluation, with specific sub-strategies including education and career development, housing, reproductive health and parenting, mental health, and caregiver recruitment, retention, training, and support. As evaluation partner to the Initiative, Child Trends evaluates progress toward the Initiative’s goals using administrative and survey data. We unpack the story behind these numbers and identify opportunities for the Initiative to increase their impact by conducting interviews and focus groups with grantees and public agency leaders, reviewing grantee publications and media, and engaging our Evaluation Advisory Board comprised of individuals with lived experience in foster care.[ii]
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This summary highlights progress toward the Initiative’s 5-year goals, shares examples of grantee efforts, and summarizes progress and barriers across six levers of change employed by the Initiative to promote positive outcomes for youth. We conclude that the Initiative has achieved its goals related to family-based placements and disseminating approaches to other jurisdictions and made notable progress toward others in advance of 2025.
Child Trends’ evaluation highlights the innovative and impactful work of the Initiative’s grantees and offers considerations for the Initiative’s continued work. Key recommendations include:
- Continue to support the long-term initiatives and partnerships that are necessary for systems-level change across all levers (e.g., to ensure policies are implemented as intended, to fill identified service gaps, and to build evidence and data to advocate for sustainable public funding).
- Continue to foster learning opportunities across grantees and jurisdictions by sharing success stories from peers in other jurisdictions, elevating new research and data, and bringing grantees and partners together.
- Build grantee and Initiative capacity to partner with young people in designing, implementing, and evaluating their work.
- Consider new areas of investment to address emerging needs (e.g., expanding the focal populations to include youth with intellectual/developmental disabilities, investing in new research to illuminate the experiences of youth in the focal populations).
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Footnotes
[i] Estimate calculated using data provided to Child Trends by Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services, Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services, and New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (as of July 1, 2022) and national AFCARS data as of September 30, 2021 (the most recent available data).
[ii] Child Trends’ Evaluation Advisory Board members focused on housing in 2023 and shared their reflections on the data and recommendations in: Bell, A., Osorio, E., Bisuano, D., Guerrero, A., & Kelley, J. (2024). Transitioning out of Foster Care With Dignity: Lived Experts’ Recommendations to Strengthen Housing Support Systems. Child Trends. [Insert link]
Suggested citation
McKlindon, A., Jordan, B., Naylon, K., Ball, J., Ibarra, A., Martinez, M., Sanders, M., Liehr, A., Malm, K., Bell, A., Mueterthies, G., Muñoz, K.S., & Osorio, E. (2024). 2023 evaluation summary of the Foster Youth Strategic Initiative. Child Trends. DOI: 10.56417/4147w1801f
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