DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39105.v1
title: Pursuing a National Estimate of Dual System Youth, Illinois, New York, Ohio, 1992-2014
title: Version 1

description: Across the country, child welfare and juvenile justice systems now recognize that youth involved in both systems (i.e., dual system youth) are a vulnerable population who go unrecognized because of challenges in information-sharing and cross-system collaboration. These challenges currently prevent the development of accurate estimations of the number of dual system youth nationally and limit understanding of best practices used by jurisdictions implementing integrated systems models. OJJDP funded this secondary analysis study to address this gap in knowledge.
All data used in the Dual System Youth Design Study were owned or accessed by various partners. No primary data collection occurred in the study. In addition, most of the data accessed by the study partners was confidential, de-identified data that required memorandums of agreement and/or court orders to access and use. Some sites have ongoing or standing agreements with the public agencies who own the data which allow access and use for specific projects. Because, most frequently, the data are owned by the public service agencies and include sensitive information the data are not available to be publicly archived. Instead, here a descriptive overview is provided of the data used and accessed by each study partner as well as contact information of a person at each site that will be able to share syntax and/or coding parameters for those who are considering to replicate the findings or methods. 
Researchers interested in inquiring the data and syntax used in this project should refer to the study partners section of the downloadable study documentation. Data provider agency names along with the specific study data that were requested are listed in the documentation.
description: The goals of the study were to 1) identify the successes and challenges associated with cross-system collaboration, identify best practices for dual system youth, and develop a tool to collect and report such information in a consistent and representative way; and 2) to provide insight into the incidence of dual system involvement and describe key characteristics (e.g., race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation) and trajectories (e.g., timing/type of encounters with the systems) of this population, and to propose a method to generate a national estimate of dual system youth.
description: Administrative data were used to examine incidence rates of dual system involvement for a cohort of youth who had their first juvenile justice petition between 2010 and 2014 (2013 to 2014 in New York City) in all three study sites and for a cohort of youth in Cook County who had their first arrest between 2010 and 2014. Using the first juvenile justice petition cohort, other administrative outcomes such as homelessness, incarceration, and receipt of public assistance were examined for dual system youth while they were children/adolescents (homelessness and public assistance) and in young adulthood (homelessness, incarceration, and public assistance).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Pursuing a National Estimate of Dual System Youth, Illinois, New York, Ohio, 1992-2014
description: Youths involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems in Cook County, Illinois; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and New York City. Smallest Geographic Unit: City
description: record abstracts