For early emerging adults with serious mental health conditions, vocational services with peer mentors are a promising adaptation of adult system evidence-based practices. Peer mentors were added to the Individual Placement and Support model of supported employment for 17- to 20-year-olds receiving residential and psychiatric care. To explore the…

The National Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child Welfare Services selected Illinois as a demonstration site in 2007 to evaluate performance-based contracting in residential treatment services. This article discusses the first two years of project implementation including developing residential treatment performance indicators,…

This study examined the association between organizational climate and changes in internalizing and externalizing behavior for youth in residential treatment centers (RTCs). The sample included 407 youth and 349 front-line residential treatment staff from 17 RTCs in Illinois. Youth behavior was measured using the Child Functional Assessment Rating…

We examined the differential outcomes in residential treatment for youths with conduct disorder (CD)--with special attention paid to interactions with age and gender--in a sample of children and adolescents in 50 residential treatment centers and group homes across Illinois. Multi-disciplinary teams rated youths ages 6-20 (N = 457) on measures of…

Compared a professional foster-care program and two specialized programs in Cook County, Illinois, with kinship and nonrelative-family foster homes. Found that professional and kinship foster care consistently outperformed specialized and nonrelative care in stability, sibling placement, care restrictiveness, and proximity to child's community of…

At least three circumstances have converged to focus attention on the outcomes associated with residential treatment. First, the reduction in lengths of stay in the psychiatric hospital has resulted in residential treatment becoming the most expensive service on a per episode basis. Second, the increasing emphasis on the identification and use of…