Reducing Delinquency Among African American Youth In Foster Care

In my recent study entitled, “Reducing delinquency among African American youth in foster care: Does gender make a difference in crossover prevention,” published in the journal Children and Youth Services Review, I use an interdisciplinary lens to address an issue of timely importance. I discuss how resilience theory can be applied to the foster care system to identify promotive factors that may later reduce the likelihood of youth engaging in delinquent acts. This issue is important as intervention development may be informed and policy changes made to improve the developmental outcomes of this at-risk group to reduce their likelihood of engaging in delinquency.

This issue is important as children and youth in the foster care system are more likely to go on to commit delinquent acts and be involved in the juvenile justice system. This is especially the case for African American youth who are overrepresented at every level of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In thinking about what works to aid African American youth in the foster care system to stop their trajectory into delinquency, it is important to contextualize their experiences – meaning identifying what factors may have contributed to these youth becoming involved in the foster care system in the first place. Later, I will review the findings of my study which identifies factors that may aid African American youth in discontinuing their trajectory into delinquency.

More >> Reducing Delinquency Among African American Youth In Foster Care