Youth Through-Care Program Model
Highlights
- Reducing recidivism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people
- Co-design case management model and oversee a trial and evaluation
- Still in progress – but looking to be positive.
Co-designing a culturally appropriate holistic case management model to reduce re-offending for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth comes with many challenges. There is a high need for a model of youth through care to provide intensive case management and support to Indigenous youth aged 10 to 17 who are exiting youth detention in Australia. The team worked with the implementing service providers and stakeholders to ensure incorporation of young people’s voice and input into the co-design and evaluation.
The project comprised co-design and evaluation phases.
The Abt Youth Through Care project team consulted abroad range of stakeholder across multiple jurisdictions to understand how the different partners and organizations might impact or work with the program model.
The co-design approach required collaboration with all stakeholders to design and develop the program model. The process works by:
- Understanding and defining issues
- Developing potential solutions
- Implementing and testing ideas
- Assessing outcomes
The project uses a mixed methods approach to evaluate the model.
This project is in the early part of the evaluation phase. A simplified client management system has been developed for service providers to log client-level data as a quantitative data source. Interviews were conducted at various times to ensure stakeholders and the young people are giving qualitative feedback.
The Abt team has facilitated connecting stakeholders with the implementing service providers to resolve system and sector issues that may limit their ability to support clients.
In addition, the evaluation made sure the clients’ stories and personal outcomes were measured at baseline and at monthly points over the course of the intervention.