In June 2018, Philadelphia City Council established the Youth Residential Placement Task Force in response to a long history of abuse in residential placements. In late 2019, they published a report of their findings and recommendations. The 19 recommendations were broken down into five major categories:
- System Level Improvements
- Reduce the Use
- Improve the Quality
- Improve the Safety
- Education Quality
The Office of the Youth Ombudsperson (OYO) hopes to be a collaborative catalyst for all five categories of improvements. With this in mind, we have narrowed the 19 recommendations across the five broad categories into three immediate recommendations:
- Reduce the Use
- Improve Safety and Quality
- Improve Aftercare
It is the OYO’s belief that first and foremost, we must prevent youth from entering residential placements and instead expand and rely on community-based alternatives. For those youth who still end up in placement, we must improve the safety and quality of the placements and provide holistic aftercare services to prevent reentry into the child welfare, juvenile justice, and behavioral health systems.
With this in mind, the OYO plans to write a series of issue briefs on these three topics, in reverse order. It is our belief that we must address the immediate needs of youth in care and aftercare is a step that can be easily and immediately implemented. As such, the first part of this series delves into the current state of aftercare across the child welfare, juvenile justice, and behavioral health systems, and provides recommendations for each.
The issue brief, titled Aftercare for Youth Across Systems, and our aftercare planning form that can be used and adapted by all three systems can be found below.
