OJJDP FY 2015 Design Study of Dual System Youth

This program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants and cooperative agreements for research and evaluation activities to organizations that OJJDP designates.

The proposed study will build upon the foundation established by prior research and the initiatives providing assistance to jurisdictions across the nation in order to enhance our knowledge and understanding of dually-involved youth. Specifically, this project will: (1) identify a method to generate a national estimate of dually-involved youth, their trajectories leading to cross-over system involvement, and the key characteristics/trajectories of this population; and (2) evaluate models of cross-system collaboration and data integration and use this information to design a method by which to collect and report such information in a consistent and representative way nationwide.
To achieve these goals, the researchers propose using a workgroup structure that includes experts in the field of child welfare and juvenile justice research and practice in a large overarching workgroup. This overarching workgroup will be supported by two subcommittees: the Linked Administrative Data Subcommittee and the Jurisdictional Case Studies Subcommittee. The proposed project will be conducted in three phases. In Phase 1, the Subcommittees will collect and/or analyze data to inform the methodology design for generating national estimates and identify the successes and challenges of data efforts at both the administrative and jurisdictional levels. Using the results generated in Phase 1, in the next Phase the Subcommittees will generate detailed designs and a plan for a larger, more widespread application of proposed methodologies. In Phase 3 of this study, the work produced by the subcommittees will be connected and documented in a report by the Workgroup. The report will summarize the results of data analysis, consider the implications the results for producing data nationwide, and propose a comprehensive data plan for implementation in Year 2 (contingent on funding for implementation).

CA/NCF