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April 2014Vol. 15, No. 4Outcomes of Permanency Roundtables for Youth

Permanency roundtables (PRTs) have emerged as a strategy for expediting legal permanence for youth. In 2010, Casey Family Programs spearheaded the Multi-Site Accelerated Permanency Project (MSAPP), which used PRTs to improve permanency efforts in 11 counties in four States (Alabama, Colorado, Florida, and Ohio). PRTs are structured meetings that involve various experts, promote "outside the box" thinking, and include the following elements: oral case presentation, rating of the child's permanency status, discussion and brainstorming of current barriers to permanency, and development of a specific action plan. In the summer of 2013, MSAPP released a report on the outcomes for youth within 12 months of their PRT.

The target population for the project was older youth who faced the most challenges to legal permanency, with many of them having a goal of another permanent planned living arrangement (APPLA). The rates of achieving legal permanency within 12 months for the 726 youth participating in the project ranged from 0 to 26 percent, with an overall rate of 8.5 percent. Most youth (61.6 percent) were still in care, 27 percent had otherwise exited State custody, and 2.9 percent had run away. The report notes that the results indicate that PRTs may not be effective with this population; however, jurisdictions reported that PRTs helped staff develop a greater awareness of the definition of legal permanency, the importance of permanency, and "thinking outside the box" to establish permanency options for youth.

The Multi-Site Accelerated Permanency Project Technical Report: 12-Month Permanency Outcomes is available on the Casey Family Programs website:

http://www.casey.org/Resources/Publications/pdf/MSAPP_12Month_FR.pdf (1 MB)