Foster Care

The Independent Living Program, which is funded by federal, state, and local tax dollars, is designed to help young people move from foster care to independent living. The program encourages them to complete high school or pass the General Educational Development test and attend postsecondary schools. The program also helps them find and keep employment and provides classes in daily living skills, such as money management, hygiene, housekeeping, and nutrition, and provides tips on how to interact with adults, such as managing conflict. However, state and local administrators say that not all the assistance youths need is always available. Some programs are not linked with employers, cannot offer skills practice in real-life settings, or fall short on supervised practice living arrangements. Few national or local studies have assessed the effectiveness of independent living services. Only one national study has been completed, and only a few of the states studies have tried to measure the ability of youths to become self-sufficient. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the program, has no method for reviewing the states' progress in helping youths make the transition from foster care, and the content and quality of the states' annual program reports HHS relies on vary and contain little information on program outcomes. HHS issued a contract in 1988 to analyze a decade's worth of annual program reports to find models for states to follow and measures to take for improving reporting and evaluation.

GAO noted that: (1) states provide a wide range of services to better ensure that foster care youths are prepared to live on their own after they leave the foster care system; (2) those services--funded by federal, state, local, and private dollars totalling at least $131.5 million in 1998--include assisting youths in attaining their educational goals, such as completing high school or passing the General Educational Development test and attending postsecondary schools; as well as assisting youths in finding and maintaining employment; (3) in addition, youths attend classes in daily living skills; (4) other transitional services, such as supervised practice living arrangements and after-care services, allow youths to try living on their own prior to leaving the foster care system and provide temporary assistance to ease the transition to independence; (5) however, state and local administrators told GAO that their ILPs cannot always provide all of the assistance administrators and youths say is needed to help youths learn to live on their own; (6) even though the federal ILP was established in 1985, few national or local studies have been completed to assess the effectiveness of independent living services in helping youths through the transition to living on their own after foster care; (7) GAO identified only one national study that has been completed to date, which found that services provided by ILPs have the potential to improve outcomes for youths; (8) in addition, although several states indicated they have completed studies that measure general youth outcomes, such as education and employment status, only a few attempted to measure the helpfulness of ILP services in youths' ability to attain self-sufficiency; (9) while the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is tasked with overseeing the implementation of ILP, it has done little to determine program effectiveness and has no established method to review the states' progress in helping youths in the transition from foster care; (10) HHS officials told GAO they recognize these deficiencies and the need to improve monitoring efforts; and (11) to begin the improvement process, HHS issued a contract in September of 1998 to analyze 10 years of annual state ILP reports to determine, among other things, which states are producing good ILP reports that could be models for other states and what measures HHS can take to improve state reporting and evaluation.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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