Program and practice elements for placement prevention: a review of interventions and their effectiveness in promoting home-based care.
Preventing unnecessary out-of-home placement for youth with behavioral and emotional needs is a goal of several public child-serving services, including child welfare, juvenile justice, and child mental health. Although a small number of manualized interventions have been created to promote family driven and community-based services and have empirical support, other less established programs have been initiated by local jurisdictions to prevent out-of-home placement. To synthesize what is known about efforts to prevent placement, this article describes the common program and practice elements of interventions described in 37 studies (published in 51 articles) that measured placement prevention outcomes for youth at risk for out-of-home care because of behavioral or mental health needs. The most common program elements across published interventions were program monitoring, case management, and accessibility promotion. The most common clinical practice elements for working with youth were assessment and individual therapy; for caregivers, problem solving skills were most frequently included; and family therapy was most common for the family unit. Effect size estimates for placement-related outcomes (decreased out-of-home placement, decreased hospitalization, decreased incarceration, and decreased costs) were calculated to estimate the treatment effectiveness of the interventions in which the program components and clinical practices are embedded.
School of Social Work, University of Maryland.
Bethany R
BR
Lee
Department of Psychology, Duksung Women's University.
Chad
C
Ebesutani
School of Social Work, University of Maryland.
Karen M
KM
Kolivoski
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Maryland.
Kimberly D
KD
Becker
School of Social Work, University of Maryland.
Michael A
MA
Lindsey
School of Medicine, University of Maryland.
Nicole Evangelista
NE
Brandt
School of Medicine, University of Maryland.
Nicole
N
Cammack
School of Social Work, University of Maryland.
Frederick H
FH
Strieder
Department of Psychology, University of California.
Bruce F
BF
Chorpita
School of Social Work, University of Maryland.
Richard P
RP
Barth
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012112:Residential Facilities / Q000592:standards*