Session: Transition Aged Foster Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Advancing Understanding of an Overlooked Population (Society for Social Work and Research 20th Annual Conference - Grand Challenges for Social Work: Setting a Research Agenda for the Future)

Background and Purpose:  For youth in foster care, the transition to adulthood represents a developmental period with complex service needs.  Although child welfare scholars have advanced understanding of the outcomes of transition aged youth as a whole, the particular needs and experiences of youth with developmental disabilities have been given much less attention.  One type of developmental disability that represents a growing number of youth in foster care is autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  ASD is characterized by deficits in communication and social interaction along with the presence of repeated and repetitive behavior.  Some children with ASD have co-occurring intellectual disability.  Transition planning for foster youth with ASD ought to account for the specialized needs of this population that stem from communication, social, and behavioral symptoms.  The purpose of this symposium is to present data from an 18 months study of this population in one state.  The study used multiple methods to describe the experiences of youth with ASD in the child welfare system as they prepare for the transition to adulthood. The symposium will present four papers that address the following three aims of our study:

1. To describe the characteristics and patterns of service use of the population of transition aged (age 18-21) foster youth with ASD in one state;
2. To estimate rates of employment for young adults in foster care with ASD;
3. To understand the barriers and facilitators of transition planning for foster youth with ASD from the perspective of youth and service providers.

Methods:  Two of the four papers use linked administrative data to describe foster youth with ASD.  Key sources of administrative data apart from child welfare system data include Medicaid paid claims for ASD relevant services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, social skills training, and behavioral modification services as well as wage report data detailing all paid employment reported to the state by employers.  Multivariate regression will be used to compare children with ASD, children with other developmental diagnoses, and children without either condition while controlling for child and contextual factors associated with outcomes.  The third and fourth papers will present qualitative analyses using grounded theory methods of individual interviews with transition aged youth with ASD and focus groups with service providers.

Results:  The study identifies unmet service needs for this significant population of transition aged youth in care.  Quantitative results confirm that transition aged foster youth have a lower rate of service use than similar aged youth with ASD in the general population.  Rates of employment among youth with ASD are approximately half that of youth without ASD or other developmental diagnoses.  From the perspective of service providers and youth, barriers and facilitators of successful transition were identified.

Conclusions:  This symposium will present findings from the first comprehensive study of transition aged foster youth with ASD.  The symposium will also include an expert in the field of disability and child welfare to discuss the research findings in the broader context of policy and practice around transition planning.