The Impact Of A Program For Crossover Youth In Ontario On Stakeholder Collaboration, Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes

Amy Beaudry

doi:10.32920/ryerson.14654604

Abstract

Crossover youth, those involved in both the child welfare and youth justice systems, are more likely to receive detention and harsher sentences than youth with no child welfare involvement. In Ontario, the Crossover Youth Project (COYP) was formed to ameliorate these systemic issues. To evaluate the success of a Toronto pilot site, a convergent parallel mixed methods study was completed. A total of 19 stakeholders, mostly from youth justice and child welfare, were interviewed at the closure of the pilot and 15 nine months later. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis and interpreted alongside quantitative data from questionnaires. Themes indicate that stakeholders’ knowledge of crossover youth and skills in advocacy increased, as well as their ability to collaborate. While their learning was maintained at follow-up, their ability to collaborate was impaired by loss of the case coordinator who was essential to facilitating conferences. Results can inform future interventions.

Highlights

Interviews with stakeholders in Ontario suggest that a lack of coordinated care and other system-wide issues prolong the involvement of crossover youth in the justice system (Bala, Finlay, De Filippis, & Hunter, 2015)
The short and long-term impact of the Cross-over Youth Project on stakeholders caring for crossover youth – including service providers in the education, child welfare, mental health, and youth justice systems – is currently unknown
Though a variety of additional themes emerged in addition to those detailed below, they will not be described here given the scope of the present research questions. Within each of these three areas, themes are organized into five sub-areas: 1) barriers for youth, which includes systemic or rights-interfering issues faced by crossover youth; 2) program implementation, as in activities completed by the Crossover Youth Project (COYP) to achieve their desired outcomes; 3) barriers to program implementation, which included problems that slowed or prevented a complete implementation; 4) program outcomes, which included the results of the program activities; and 5) program recommendations, which included stakeholders’ desired activities for future projects targeting crossover youth

Summary

Introduction

As of March 31, 2013, 62 428 children – approximately 8.5 in every 1000 – were living in out-of-home care across Canada, a number that has been relatively steady since 2004 (Jones, Sinha, & Trocmé, 2015). Crossover youth typically have high educational needs (Halemba et al, 2004) and high rates of mental health and substance use issues (Halemba et al, 2004; Turpel-Lafond & Kendall, 2009) They face systemic barriers within the justice system, including harsher sentences and greater likelihood of detention as compared to noncrossover youth (Conger & Ross, 2001; Ryan et al, 2007). Interviews with stakeholders in Ontario suggest that a lack of coordinated care and other system-wide issues prolong the involvement of crossover youth in the justice system (Bala, Finlay, De Filippis, & Hunter, 2015) Programs such as the Cross-over Youth Project in Ontario have been developed to ameliorate these systems-level issues and improve outcomes for these youth through a variety of avenues, including greater system integration between child welfare and youth justice and service provider education (Scully & Finlay, 2015).

Objectives

Results

Conclusion