The Effects of TF-CBT and Wraparound Services on Disadvantaged Youth: Experimental Evidence

Children’s Home and Aid (CHA) and Youth Advocate Programs (YAP) have teamed up to provide the new C2C intervention to Chicago youth. YAP will assign each youth an advocate who will interact weekly with the youth in one-on-one and family meetings, as well as recreational groups. The advocate will work with the youth for 12+ hours a week to engage them in pro-social activities and build up the natural supports in their lives. In addition, CHA will provide SPARCS (Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress), a group trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. SPARCS is a specific form of therapy that is designed for youth who have been traumatized, and continue to live with high levels of stress. Youth will receive 12-16 sessions of SPARCS aimed at reducing trauma symptoms and improving behavior.

The program is intended for high-risk youth (ages 13-18), and therefore will specifically target youth who are actively gang-affiliated, on juvenile probation, have been found guilty of weapons offenses, are seriously disruptive in school through chronic truancy, serious misconduct or frequent suspensions, or have been direct victims of or witnesses to traumatic violence. Referrals will be received from Chicago Public Schools, the Cook County Juvenile Probation Department, and other agency and community partners that work with youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system and have disengaged from school.

Youth who are randomly selected from the eligible population of referrals and agree to participate in the intervention will receive 5-6 months of C2C programming. The program will be delivered in six cohorts (to date), each lasting five-six months and enrolling between 60-110 youth at a time. The goal of the C2C intervention is to reduce criminal and violent behavior and improve academic achievement by helping youth stabilize and successfully participate in school, community, and family life. The study may enroll additional cohorts if additional funding becomes available.

2015-10-09

2024-11-30

• Criminal activity [Time Frame: 6 month intervals post randomization to at least 2 years post]
The number of arrests will be measured using individual-level administrative data on juvenile and adult arrests from the Chicago Police Department.
• School engagement [Time Frame: 6 month intervals post randomization to at least 2 years post]
Schooling outcomes will be measured using student-level administrative data from the Chicago Public Schools. Engagement will be assessed using data on attendance, CPS on-track indicator, grades, course-taking, disciplinary incidents, test scores, graduation, school switching, and enrollment in schools within juvenile justice facilities.

However, we need to wait until a youth becomes eligible for graduation as some youth start the program as young as 13. Therefore if we need to follow youth for longer than 2 years post randomization to observe graduation or other school engagement variables, we would do so.

• Employment [Time Frame: 6 month intervals post randomization to at least 2 years post]
Employment and wages will be measured using individual-level quarterly earnings records from Unemployment Insurance, provided by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
However, we need to wait until a youth becomes eligible for employment as some youth start the program as young as 13. Therefore if we need to follow youth for longer than 2 years post randomization to observe possible employment, we would do so.

The interval time periods will be used to determine when most of the change is happening for all outcomes.

In addition to using Chicago Police Department data, we will also look at outcomes using Illinois State Police data as not all youth in our study have and will be arrested in the city limits.

We plan to investigate total arrests as well as arrests broken down by certain categories such as violent, property, drug, or "other". This other category might be further categorized if it makes up a majority of arrests. We may use techniques such as factor analysis to further sub-divide categories.

if available, we will obtain data from the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) to explore how the program impacted public benefit enrollment (such as SNAP, medicaid, etc).


If possible, we will work with the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) to explore the impact of the program on enrollment in summer employment programs in Chicago.

Lastly, if given permission, we will explore the long-run impact of this program (5-10 years post). This would involve looking at some of our primary outcomes for a longer time horizon (adult employment, adult arrest outcomes) and exploring new outcomes such as enrollment in college through the National Student Clearinghouse.

Randomized Controlled Trial: For each program cohort, treatment youth will be randomly selected from a list of eligible youth that were referred to the program. Program providers will then offer the program to those youth randomized to treatment. We will compare the treatment group outcomes to the control group outcomes, looking specifically at arrests, connection to school and/or employment, and academic performance. Given the structure of the referrals and background of our youth, we will stratify (or block) by referral source to improve our treatment effect estimates.

More detail on RCT:

The referral sources will provide the Crime Lab with a list of names, from which the Crime Lab will randomly select half to receive the program. The Crime Lab will share the list of selected youth with CHA and YAP, who will then contact and recruit the youth. This method ensures that no youth will be contacted with a potential offer of services that is then rescinded. There is a high need for these services, but because the program is intensive and expensive, CHA and YAP only have the capacity to provide the 5/6-month program to 110 youth at a time. This study design ensures a fair allocation of these limited services and does not restrict the control group from getting other services for which they would normally be eligible.

We will stratify based on referral source. Stratifying according to some variables will improve the precision of our estimates to the extent that the referral source of a youth helps explain variation in our treatment. This is possible given that the level of risk in engaging in violent behavior or disconnecting from school will differ by referral source.

Randomization done by computer

Eligible youth were randomized at the individual level and stratified by referral source.

No

1740 youth

1740 youth

About 870 treatment youth, 870 control youth, but this depends on take-up and how many youth need to be offered/randomized to the program to reach the needed cohort size.

Pre-Analysis Plan

We conduct a large-scale, randomized controlled trial of a six-month intervention combining intensive mentoring and group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for youth in Chicago, following study participants for up to five years. The program was designed to engage young people at higher risk of engagement with the criminal justice system, and successfully did so with a take-up rate of 62%. Over 24 months, youth offered the program experienced an 18% reduction in the probability of being arrested, with no impact on number of arrests. We find a significant impact on violence engagement, with a 23% reduction in the probability of a violent-crime arrest within 24 months. We find the program's impact in preventing any arrest persists into adulthood, up to four years post randomization. The program moderately improves school engagement in the first year as well. Sub-population analyses suggests that all youth are benefiting from the program, but that the program may be moving different outcomes for different groups of youth in ways related to baseline risk of engaging in the justice system or disengaging from school. We conclude that programs that combine CBT and mentoring can serve as a model to engaging a harder-to-reach population of youth, predominantly outside of school, and be cost effective in reducing criminal justice contact in the longer run.

Abdul-Razzak, Nour and Domash, Brandon and Hallberg, Kelly and Pinto Poehls, Cristobal, Longer-Term Impacts of a Youth Behavioral Science Intervention: Experimental Evidence from Chicago. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5303292 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5303292

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5303292