Do intensive in-home services prevent placement?: A case study of Youth Villages' Intercept® program.

• The paper explores the treatment effect associated with a placement prevention program. • Novel methodological approaches are undertaken to address selection bias. • Intercept prevented placement with a sustained effect 12 months after services ended. In this paper, we describe our assessment of whether Youth Villages' Intercept program had a demonstrable impact on the likelihood a young person will be placed in out-of-home care given the young person was at risk of placement by virtue of having been the subject of an investigation for maltreatment. Intercept is an integrated approach to intensive in-home parenting skill development that offers a variety of evidence-based and best practices to meet the individualized needs of a family and young person. Intercept staff work with families with children who are at risk of entry into state custody (i.e. foster care) to prevent placement. Using a quasi-experimental design with exact matching, we found that Intercept did reduce the risk of placement into foster care following a maltreatment report. In addition, we found that the treatment effect was particularly strong during the first six months after maltreatment report was made. We also found sustained effects after treatment ended. The findings are considered alongside other evidence that speaks to the efficacy of placement prevention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]