An intimate account of the personal and socioeconomic circumstances that affect state care leavers, this book voices the distinct yet interconnected experience of these young people to reinforce the increasingly prevalent Irish model.
This comprehensive book thoroughly addresses all aspects of health care transition of adolescents and young adults with chronic illness or disability; and includes the framework, tools and case-based examples needed to develop and evaluate a Health Care Transition (HCT) planning program that can be implemented regardless of a patient’s disease or disability. Health Care Transition: Building a Program for Adolescents and Young Adults with Chronic Illness and Disability is a uniquely inclusive resource, incorporating youth/young adult, caregiver, and pediatric and adult provider voices and perspectives. Part I of the book opens by defining Health Care Transition, describing the urgent need for comprehensive transition planning, barriers to HCT and then offering a framework for developing and evaluating health care transition programs. Part II focuses on the anatomic and neuro-chemical changes that occur in the brain during adolescence and young adulthood, and how they affect function and behavior. Part III covers the perspectives of important participants in the HCT transition process – youth and young adults, caregivers, and both pediatric and adult providers. Each chapter in Part IV addresses a unique aspect of developing HCT programs. Part V explores various examples of successful transition from the perspective of five key participants in the transition process - patients, caregivers, pediatric providers, adult providers and third party payers. Related financial matters are covered in part VI, while Part VII explores special issues such as HCT and the medical home, international perspectives, and potential legal issues. Models of HCT programs are presented in Part VIII, utilizing an example case study. Representing perspectives from over 75 authors and more than 100 medical centers in North America and Europe, Health Care Transition: Building a Program for Adolescents and Young Adults with Chronic Illness and Disability is an ideal resource for any clinician, policy maker, caregiver, or hospitalist working with youth in transition.
In the decade after high school, young people continue to rely on their families in many ways-sometimes for financial support, sometimes for help with childcare, and sometimes for continued shelter. But what about those young people who confront special difficulties during this period, many of whom can count on little help from their families? On Your Own Without a Net documents the special challenges facing seven vulnerable populations during the transition to adulthood: former foster care youth, youth formerly involved in the juvenile justice system, youth in the criminal justice system, runaway and homeless youth, former special education students, young people in the mental health system, and youth with physical disabilities. During adolescence, government programs have been a major part of their lives, yet eligibility for most programs typically ends between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. This critical volume shows the unfortunate repercussions of this termination of support and points out the issues that must be addressed to improve these young people's chances of becoming successful adults.
Over the course of the last two decades, improved practices in child and adolescent mental healthcare have led to a decreased environment of stigma, which also led to an increased identification and treatment of mental health disorders in children and youth. Considering that treatment and outcomes are improved with early intervention, this is good news. However, the success gained in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry leads to a new challenge: transitioning from adolescent care to adult care. It has been known for some time that children, adult, and geriatric patients all have unique needs where it comes to mental healthcare, yet limited work has been done where it comes to the shifting of the lifespan. Where it comes to the child-adult transition—defined as those in their late teens and early/mid-20s—there can be multiple barriers in seeking mental healthcare that stem from age-appropriate developmental approaches as well as include systems of care needs. Apart from increasing childhood intervention, the problem is exacerbated by the changing social dynamics: more youths are attending college rather than diving straight into the workforce, but for various reasons these youths can be more dependent on their parents more than previous generations. Technology has improved the daily lives of many, but it has also created a new layer of complications in the mental health world. The quality and amount of access to care between those with a certain level of privilege and those who do not have this privilege is sharp, creating more complicating factors for people in this age range. Such societal change has unfolded so rapidly that training programs have not had an opportunity to catch up, which has created a crisis for care. Efforts to modernize the approach to this unique age group are still young, and so no resource exists for any clinicians at any phase in their career. This book aims to serve as the first concise guide to fill this gap in the literature. The book will be edited by two leading figures in transition age youth, both of whom are at institutions that have been at the forefront of this clinical work and research. This proposed mid-sized guide is therefore intended to be a collaborative effort, written primarily by child and adolescent psychiatrists, and also with adult psychiatrists. The aim is to discuss the developmental presentation of many common mental health diagnoses and topics in chapters, with each chapter containing clinically-relevant “bullet points” and/or salient features that receiving providers, who are generally, adult-trained, should keep in mind when continuing mental health treatment from the child and adolescent system. Chapters will cover a wide range of challenges that are unique to transition-age youths, including their unique developmental needs, anxiety, mood, and personality disorders at the interface of this development, trauma and adjustment disorders, special populations, and a wide range of other topics. Each chapter will begin with a clinical pearl about each topic before delving into the specifics.
Currently, there are over 400,000 youth living in foster care in the United States, with over 20,000 aging out of the child welfare system each year. Foster youth are more prone to experience short- and long-term adverse developmental outcomes including diminished academic achievement and career opportunities, poor mental and overall health, financial struggles, homelessness, early sexual intercourse, and substance abuse, many of these outcomes are risk factors for involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite their challenges, foster youth have numerous strengths and positive assets that carry them through their journeys, helping them to overcome obstacles and build resilience. The Handbook of Foster Youth brings together a prominent group of multidisciplinary experts to provide nuanced insights on the complex dynamics of the foster care system, its impact on youth’s lives, and the roles of institutions and policies in the foster system. It discusses current gaps and future directions as well as recommendations to advance the field. This book provides an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges and strengths of foster youth and the child welfare system, and the combined efforts of caregivers, community volunteers, policy makers, and the professionals and researchers who work with them.
The EPDF and EPUB are available open access under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This publication was supported by the University of Essex's open access fund. How do young people transitioning from care plan their future lives? Planning is usually thought of as requiring clear goals and ‘future orientation’, but how might planning be regarded by young people whose wishes, hopes, and plans have been repeatedly dashed? In this book Peter Appleton builds on research interviews with care-experienced young adults, and on cross-disciplinary theories of planning and of emotions, to develop a creative and non-dogmatic three-aspects model of planning for young people leaving care. A valuable resource for practitioners, researchers, and educators, this book puts forward a powerful case to think more broadly and flexibly about transition planning with care-leavers, placing the voices of young people at its heart.
Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults describes what is meant by the term young adulthood, who young adults are, what they are doing, and what they need. This study recommends actions that nonprofit programs and federal, state, and local agencies can take to help young adults make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. According to this report, young adults should be considered as a separate group from adolescents and older adults. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults makes the case that increased efforts to improve high school and college graduate rates and education and workforce development systems that are more closely tied to high-demand economic sectors will help this age group achieve greater opportunity and success. The report also discusses the health status of young adults and makes recommendations to develop evidence-based practices for young adults for medical and behavioral health, including preventions. What happens during the young adult years has profound implications for the rest of the life course, and the stability and progress of society at large depends on how any cohort of young adults fares as a whole. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults will provide a roadmap to improving outcomes for this age group as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Helping vulnerable children develop their full potential is an attractive idea with broad common-sense appeal. However, child well-being is a broad concept, and the legislative mandate for addressing well-being in the context of the current child welfare system is not particularly clear. This volume asserts that finding a place for well-being on the list of outcomes established to manage the child welfare system is not as easy as it first appears. The overall thrust of this argument is that policy should be evidence-based, and the available evidence is a primary focus of the book. Because policymakers have to make decisions that allocate resources, a basic understanding of incidence in the public health tradition is important, as is evidence that speaks to the question of what works clinically. The rest of the book addresses the evidence. Chapter 2 integrates bio-ecological and public health perspectives to give the evidence base coherence. Chapters 3 and 4 combine evidence from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, the Multistate Foster Care Data Archive, and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to offer an unprecedented profile of children as they enter the child welfare system. Chapters 5 and 6 address the broad question of what works. A concluding chapter focuses on policy and future directions, suggesting that children starting out, children starting school, and children starting adolescence are high-risk populations for which explicit strategies have to be formed. This timely volume offers useful insights into the child welfare system and will be of particular interest to policymakers, academics with an interest in Child Welfare Policy, Social Work educators, and Child Advocates.