Significant amounts of money and resources are spent on child and family services, so successful evaluation of whether or not they are achieving the best outcomes is therefore essential. This edited collection offers an international perspective on the challenges of designing and undertaking outcome-based evaluation of child and family services. With contributions from leading international experts, it introduces the key ideas and issues currently being debated in the evaluation of these services; discusses relevant approaches to designing and using evaluation methods; and provides examples of evaluation from the real world of policy and practice. Issues covered include setting appropriate indicators for service effectiveness, cross-cultural evaluation of service interventions, service user involvement in evaluation, and evaluations of family and community-based services. This invaluable book will be essential reading for policy makers, planners, commissioners and managers across child and family welfare services, as well as researchers and other academics in the field.

Large numbers of young people in the United States were in foster care or in juvenile justice custody as teenagers, and many of them have a difficult time making a successful transition to independent adulthood as they leave these systems. Most of them faced a number of disadvantages during childhood and often have poor outcomes across several domains relative to their peers as they become adults. While government funding to help these groups has increased, few of the programs that have been rigorously evaluated have been found to improve outcomes. To advance knowledge in this area, the Youth Villages program sought an independent evaluation of its Transitional Living program--now known as "YVLifeSet"--which is one example of an "independent living" program. The Transitional Living program aims to help young men and women make the transition to adulthood by providing intensive, individualized, and clinically focused case management, support, and counseling. The evaluation used a rigorous random assignment design in which study sample members were assigned at random to either a program group that was offered the Transitional Living program services or to a control group that was not offered those services. This third major report in the evaluation builds on the one-year findings and assesses the estimated two-year impacts of the Transitional Living program using administrative data for three outcome domains: education, employment and earnings, and criminal involvement. The report also presents information on the costs of operating the Transitional Living program. Key findings overall and from the two-year analysis include: (1) Transitional Living did not increase young people's average earnings during the second year of follow-up, but it had a modest, positive effect at some earnings levels during this time period and it led to modest increases in employment and earnings over the full two-year study period; (2) Statistically significant effects were not observed in Year 1 in the education, social support, and criminal involvement domains, and did not emerge in Year 2 (though social support was measured in Year 1 only); and (3) The program increased housing stability and economic well-being and improved some of the primary outcomes related to health and safety in Year 1, but data were not available to assess whether impacts in these domains continued into Year 2. The following is appended: Impacts by Subgroups of Young People. Contains a list of earlier MDRC Publications on the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation. [For the first report, see "Moving into Adulthood: Implementation Findings from the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation" (ED545451); for the second report, see "Becoming Adults: One-Year Impact Findings from the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation" (ED558489); and for the policy brief, see "After Foster Care and Juvenile Justice: A Preview of the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation. Policy Brief" (ED531545).].

This edited collection offers an international perspective on the challenges of designing and undertaking outcome-based evaluation of child and family services. It introduces the key ideas and issues currently being debated in the evaluation of these services and provides examples of evaluation from policy and practice.

Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults describes what is meant by the term young adulthood, who young adults are, what they are doing, and what they need. This study recommends actions that nonprofit programs and federal, state, and local agencies can take to help young adults make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. According to this report, young adults should be considered as a separate group from adolescents and older adults. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults makes the case that increased efforts to improve high school and college graduate rates and education and workforce development systems that are more closely tied to high-demand economic sectors will help this age group achieve greater opportunity and success. The report also discusses the health status of young adults and makes recommendations to develop evidence-based practices for young adults for medical and behavioral health, including preventions. What happens during the young adult years has profound implications for the rest of the life course, and the stability and progress of society at large depends on how any cohort of young adults fares as a whole. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults will provide a roadmap to improving outcomes for this age group as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.