How can we improve outcomes for youth leaving foster care?

Challenge

Each year, thousands of young people leave foster care and begin the transition to adulthood. Many face challenges finding stable housing, pursuing education, securing employment, and accessing supportive services. The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood helps states, territories, and Tribes provide services to support these young people as they build independent lives.

Federal legislation requires ongoing evaluation of promising Chafee-funded programs. Previous large-scale studies strengthened the evidence base but also revealed a common challenge: Many local programs are difficult to evaluate using traditional impact methods. Small program sizes, implementation differences, and limited comparison groups can make rigorous evaluations challenging.

The Chafee Strengthening Outcomes for Transition to Adulthood (Chafee SOTA) project addresses this gap. The project seeks to identify innovative learning methods that work in real-world service environments while maintaining strong evaluation standards. By improving approaches for program assessment, the project helps build evidence on effective supports for young people transitioning from foster care. These findings can help strengthen services, inform policy decisions, and improve opportunities for young people across the country.

Solutions

Westat leads the Chafee SOTA project in partnership with the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect, Dr. Katie Richards-Schuster at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and CLH Strategies & Solutions. The team offers expertise in child welfare, youth engagement, evaluation design, implementation science, and evidence building.

The Chafee SOTA project focuses on developing and applying innovative learning methods to help programs improve services and generate actionable evidence. Rather than relying solely on traditional evaluation approaches, the team tailors methods to the realities of youth-serving programs. This approach increases both feasibility and rigor.

To understand the needs of the field, Westat and its partners engaged experts in child welfare, evaluation methodology, education, employment, homelessness, and related topics. The team also prioritized meaningful involvement of young adults with foster care experience. Their perspectives help ensure that evaluation activities reflect the real circumstances of young people.

Westat and its partners conducted learning activities to identify information needs, evaluation challenges, and promising solutions. Team members also completed a landscape analysis examining how states communicate information about services and resources to eligible youth and young adults. In addition, the team convened youth and young adults with foster care experience to better understand real-world access to services.

These efforts informed the development of a portfolio of innovative learning methods designed to improve program implementation and assess effectiveness. Westat and its partners then identified and engaged youth-serving organizations interested in participating in evaluation activities. Following comprehensive evaluability assessments, 4 programs were selected as evaluation sites: Great Expectations in Virginia, Just in Time for Foster Youth in California, My First Place in California, and Works Wonders in Rhode Island.

Working closely with these organizations, Westat and its partners designed evaluation approaches tailored to each program’s service model. These approaches include single-case designs, interrupted time series, synthetic control methods, and quasi-experimental designs. This flexibility allows the project to generate meaningful findings while respecting local context and operational realities. The result is a stronger foundation for evidence-based decision-making within the child welfare field. Westat’s role extends beyond data collection and analysis. Westat brings expertise in stakeholder engagement, mixed-methods research, evaluation innovation, and translation of evidence into practical guidance. By combining methodological rigor with partnership-driven learning, Westat helps the field explore new approaches to supporting young people transitioning to adulthood.

Results

The Chafee SOTA project is helping to expand the evidence base for programs that support youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood. By testing innovative evaluation approaches, the project is identifying new ways to assess programs that may be difficult to study through traditional methods. Findings are helping federal, state, Tribal, and local leaders better understand how services can improve outcomes for young people exiting foster care. The project is also generating practical lessons about implementing and evaluating promising practices in various settings.

As evidence grows, child welfare agencies and service providers will have richer data to guide decisions about housing, education, employment, and other supports. The project’s youth-centered approach helps ensure that future programs reflect the experiences and priorities of the young people they serve.

Ultimately, the work aims to strengthen opportunities for young adults leaving foster care, helping a larger percentage achieve stability, independence, and long-term success.

Learn more

Chafee SOTA Site Profiles

• Great Expectations (GE) (PDF)
• Just in Time for Foster Youth (JIT) (PDF)
• My First Place (MFP) (PDF)
• Works Wonders® (WW) (PDF)