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This study explores how children's drawings, as rated on the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS), are related to their emotional and behavioral health. Participating students (ages 8-16, N=53), attending a therapeutic day school for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, drew a picture of a person picking an apple from a tree (PPAT). A discriminant function analysis indicated that ratings on five subscales--Integration, Realism, Problem-Solving, Developmental Level, and Details of Objects and Environment--predicted group membership into impaired vs. nonimpaired thinking (74% of cases correctly classified). This study broadens the use of the FEATS to a child clinical population. Further, results validate the use of children's art forms as a basis for clinical insight and suggest that children's drawings can be a helpful tool for diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation purposes.

Objective: This article describes the evaluation of permanency roundtables, an intervention to help youth in foster care achieve legal permanency and the challenges evaluators faced in finding and using appropriate comparison data. Method: In 2009, permanency roundtables were conducted for 496 children in Georgia, most of whom had spent extended time in care. Half (50%) achieved legal permanency within 24 months of the roundtables. Results: Five potential sources of comparison data, none of which provide an ideal comparison, are presented and discussed. Conclusions: Ideally, evaluators should plan for one or more comparison groups at the very beginning of the evaluation. However, post hoc comparisons should not be dismissed altogether. The challenge for evaluators is to generate valid comparison groups to determine whether an intervention made a significant improvement, despite challenges such as limited funding, tight timelines, and unmeasured contextual differences between groups.

This article is based on the findings from a subset of gender identity and sexual orientation questions from The Casey Field Office Mental Health Study (CFOMH). It aims to contribute the experiences of youth in the care of Casey Family Programs to the increasing body of research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) youth in foster care, as well as inform future studies in this area. The CFOMH study interviewed 188 adolescents ages 14 to 17 who were receiving foster care services from Casey Family Programs in 2006. The experiences in care of youth who identified as LGBQ (n = 10) are presented in narrative form, along with data from all youth in care (N = 188) regarding their perceptions of the foster care environment for LGBTQ youth. These findings are intended to underscore the need to conduct a larger, more in-depth study of the experiences of LGBTQ youth in foster care and the environment that foster care provides for them.

This study contributes to the body of research on the educational outcomes of young adults who were formerly placed in foster care. Telephone interviews were conducted with 359 young adults (a 54.6% response rate). Participants must have been served for at least one year by one private foster care agency in one of its twenty-two offices. Results indicated that young adults from this study completed high school at a rate higher than most foster care follow-up studies find and comparable to that of the general population. However, few respondents had completed any postsecondary education, and many had dropped out of educational or training programs. Some foster care experiences were found to significantly predict educational outcomes among the respondents, including feeling safe in care, receiving supplemental foster care services, number of placements, and number of social workers. Recommendations for policy, practice, and systems improvement are also provided. (Contains 5 tables and 2 footnotes.)

The Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study examined the relation between experiences in foster care and depression among young adults who spent at least a year in foster care as adolescents. Results indicate that preparation for leaving foster care, nurturing supports from the foster family, school stability, access to tutoring, access to therapeutic service and support, and a shorter and more stable placement history were associated with a lower probability of depression in young adulthood. Results provide evidence that suggest ways to improve practice to decrease rates of depression among alumni of care. (Contains 2 tables.)

Studied learning culture and outcomes measurement in 25 community agencies serving children and youth. Findings indicate that although there is an awareness of the importance of outcomes evaluation, most agencies lack the resources for its systematic implementation. (SLD)