Project summary
About
This systematic review stemmed from my work at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, where I managed an impact evaluation of a novel program providing additional support to young people transitioning from out-of-home care. This experience sparked a broader investigation into the evidence base for policies and programs for care leavers, ultimately shaping my PhD research.
The project unfolded over several years, beginning with an initial search in 2020 that informed a technical report for What Works for Children’s Social Care. We updated the search in 2022 to incorporate recent evidence into the review for publication and to support a related review on mental health services for care leavers.
Our review focused on studies with valid counterfactuals, including both randomised controlled trials and observational studies that used methods plausibly controlling for selection into treatment. This yielded 16 studies examining a range of transition support programs and extended care policies, all but one conducted in the United States.
Our analysis pooled results into 20 small meta-analyses for independent living programs and coaching and support programs. However, we have very low confidence in the certainty of these results. Overall, while some interventions, particularly extended care, showed promise, the existing evidence is insufficient to recommend any included approach.
All materials from this project are openly available, including our protocol, pre-registration, technical reports, and supplementary materials. The GitHub repository contains all analysis code and data.
Funding
This project was funded by the What Works for Children’s Social Care.
Team
This review was a collaboration between researchers from the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (who employed me at the time), Monash University and Bristol University and practitioners from The Fostering Network.
Research output
All of the output from this project is open access and available online.
Peer reviewed publications
Taylor, D., Albers, B., Mann, G., Lewis, J., Taylor, R., Mendes, P., Macdonald, G., & Shlonsky, A. (2024). Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Policies and Interventions that Improve Health, Psychosocial, and Economic Outcomes for Young People Leaving the Out-of-Home Care System. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(5), 3534-3554. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380241253041
Supplementary material: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8128712
Taylor, D., Shlonsky, A., Albers, B., Chakraborty, S., Lewis, J., Mendes, P., Macdonald, G., Williams, K. (2021). Protocol for a systematic review of policies, programs or interventions designed to improve health and wellbeing of young people leaving the out-of-home care system. Systematic Reviews, 10, Article 240. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-021-01792-5
Technical reports
Taylor, D., Albers, B., Mann, G., Chakraborty, S., Lewis, J., Mendes, P., Macdonald, G., Williams, K. & Shlonsky, A. (2021). Systematic review and meta-analysis of policies, programmes, and interventions that improve outcomes for young people leaving the out-of-home care system. What Works for Children’s Social Care, London. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.24525.56809
Ott, E., Willis, E., Taylor, D. (2023). Reviews on mental health services for care leavers. What Works for Children’s Social Care, London. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19958.00329
Preregistration
Taylor, D., Shlonksy, A., Lewis, J., Chakraborty, S., Mendes, P., Macdonald, G., Williams. K. (2020) The effectiveness of policies, programs or interventions to improve health and psychosocial outcomes for young people leaving the out of home care system: a systematic review [Preregistration]. PROSPERO. CRD42020146999 https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42020146999