Do youth in out-of-home care receive recommended mental health and educational services following screening evaluations?

For children in out-of-home care, a significant gap exists between those who need services and those who receive them. Screening all children in out-of-home care is recommended to reduce this gap. This study was designed to determine if recommendations from mental health and educational screening evaluations were related to service implementation for youth in out-of-home care. Screening evaluations were completed with 171 maltreated youth (ages 9 to 11) who had been placed in out-of-home care within the prior year. Written reports summarizing the findings were provided to children's caseworkers. Service utilization was assessed at baseline (T1; before screening reports were completed) and follow-up (T2; 9-12 months later) interviews. For children not already receiving services at T1, logistic regression analyses tested the association between T1 recommendations for services and new service implementation by T2. Mental health (youth-report) and educational (teacher-report) outcomes were analyzed separately. Screening evaluations identified 22% of children with unmet mental health needs and 36% with unmet educational needs at T1. Children who received a recommendation for new services (i.e., all of those with unmet needs) were more likely to receive mental health (OR = 2.50, p = .06) and/or educational (OR = 3.54, p = .04) services by T2 than children who did not receive recommendations for services. While recommendations increased the odds of receiving services, almost half of the children with unmet mental health needs did not receive services, and 84% of children with unmet educational needs did not receive services by T2. Much work remains to ensure youth receive needed services.