Abstract: County-Level Variation in Transition Housing Placements for Transition-Age Foster Youth in California (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 18, 2026

Liberty BR K, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Sunggeun (Ethan) Park, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, MI

Selena Liu-Raphael, Lead Policy Analyst, Thriving into Adulthood, Catalyst Center Learning Hub, CA

Justin Harty, PhD, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, AZ

Nathanael Okpych, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut, Hartford

Andrea Eastman, PhD, Co-Director of the Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Mark Courtney, PhD, Co-Director, Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub, University of California at Berkeley, CA

Background: California has a decentralized child welfare system that grants county child welfare departments significant discretion, including how to make placement referrals for transition-age youth in foster care (TAY). While a decentralized system may allow counties to better accommodate the needs of TAY by leveraging the capacity and expertise of local service providers, recent studies show that a decentralized system may also produce varying service experiences for TAY based on the county in which they are placed. In this study, we aim to describe county-level variation in the availability of and placement in the transitional housing placement program (THPP). THPP is a placement option for TAY that provides additional supportive services to reduce their chances of homelessness, unemployment, and instability after exiting foster care

Method: We use California child welfare administrative data to capture TAY’s placement records, THPP providers, and the supervising county. We first identified about 6,000 TAY who turned 18 between 2014 and 2018, stayed in care after their 18th birthday, and were not missing information on their supervising county. We also identified 69 THPP providers who served TAY in California between 2016 and 2018. Fifty-three of the 58 counties in California had at least one youth who met these criteria and were included in our analysis. We calculated the number of THPP providers operating in each county and the percentage of TAY placed in THPP for each county. We grouped counties by urbanicity, resulting in four groups: rural, urban, large urban, and Los Angeles (LA) county.

Results: The number of providers offering THPP placements varied significantly across county and was correlated with the counties’ TAY population. LA County, which accounts for a third of California’s TAY population, had 31 THPP providers. In the 11 large urban counties, an average of 19 providers offered THPP. The 19 urban and 22 rural counties each had an average of nine and five providers offering THPP, respectively. We also found significant variation (p <.05) between counties in the percentage of TAY placed in THPP. Statewide, 21% of the TAY were placed in THPP. The percentage of TAY in THPP was 12% in LA County. In other counties across the state, the percentage of TAY placed in THPP ranged from 14% and 38% in large urban counties, 1% to 55% in urban counties, and 3% to 83% in rural counties. Further, our analyses found that the variation in the percentage of youth placed in THPPs was not associated with the TAY population or the number of THPP providers.

Conclusion: Our study finds that TAY’s chance to receive specialized care may not be equal across the state, even if the youth may live in a county with more THPP providers. In other words, based on their supervising county, the opportunity for TAY to receive specialized intensive services that support their transition to adulthood can vary. A deeper mixed methods inquiry into county-level THPP referral practices could then inform more consistent and equitable statewide policy and practice.