Helping Former Foster Youth Graduate from College

Campus support programs provide financial, academic, and other types of supports to help former foster youth succeed in college. However, relatively little is known about the impact of these programs on college retention or graduation rates. This study lays the groundwork for an impact evaluation by examining program implementation from two different perspectives. Researchers conducted telephone interviews with the directors of 10 campus support programs in California and Washington State. The interviews covered a variety of domains, including the population served, referral sources and recruitment, the application process, the provision of services and supports, program staff, relationships with stakeholders, and data collection. In addition, participants from 8 of the 10 programs completed a web-based survey that asked about their perceptions of and experiences with the program. The survey included questions about students' demographic characteristics, referral and recruitment, the application process, reasons for participating in the program, services and supports received, unmet needs, contact with staff, and recommendations for improvement. The report concludes with several recommendations for moving forward with a methodologically sound impact evaluation of campus support programs for former foster youth

Employment Needs of Foster Youth in Illinois: Findings from the Midwest Study

Far too many of the young people who age out of foster care in Illinois fare poorly in the labor market during their transition to adulthood. Since the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program was created in 1999, it has been providing states with funds to help foster youth making the transition to adulthood achieve self-sufficiency. A major purpose of the program is to ensure that youth who remain in foster care until age 18 or older "receive the education, training and services necessary to obtain employment." Unfortunately, the limited research that has been done on young adults who "aged out" of foster care has found that their labor market outcomes are generally quite poor. This study describes what Illinois young people told us about their current and prior participation in the labor force, including work-related training or services they received. Throughout the report, we make comparisons between the young people who were under the care and supervision of the juvenile court in Cook County (hereafter referred to as the Cook County sample), and the young people who were under the care and supervision of juvenile courts in other counties (hereafter referred to as the Other Counties sample). Although most had some work experience, they had difficulty staying employed. Moreover, despite the fact that the percentage of young people who were working was greater than the percentage who were not, most of those who were employed were not working at a job that paid a living wage. The Foster Care Independence Act specifically mentions employment-related services and supports as being among the types of assistance that states should use their Chafee funding to provide. At baseline, when these young people were age 17 or 18, only 63 percent reported having received at least one service or support to help prepare them for employment. Unfortunately, the percentage of young people who reported receiving services or supports to prepare them for employment fell over time

Providing Foster Care for Young Adults: Early Implementation of California's Fostering Connections Act

This report examines the planning process for implementing California's Fostering Connections to Success Act, as well as the new law's early implementation. It is based on data collected from in-depth interviews with key informants who played a critical role in passage of the law, in implementation planning, or in early implementation at the county and state level and from focus groups with young people who stood to benefit directly from the legislation. Although extended foster care is likely to look different in different states, California's experience offers many lessons from which other states might learn

Master of Science

thesisNearshore fluvial to tidal transitional depositional systems are becoming increasingly important due to the large number of global hydrocarbon reserves held in such deposits. These deposits are inherently complex due to their heterolithic nature and therefore, interpreting facies and facies relationships in seismic reflection profiles is problematic. The fluvial and tidally influenced nearshore deposits of the late Cretaceous John Henry Member (JHM) of the Straight Cliffs Formation, located in the Kaiparowits Plateau of southern Utah, offers an excellent opportunity to improve our understanding of how the fluvial to tidal transition impacts subsurface petroleum reservoirs and their expression in seismic reflection profiles. The focus of the first chapter is to investigate the impact of heterogeneous depositional environments and their rock properties to model amplitude versus offset (AVO) using a single core. Core EP-25 exhibits lithofacies from a progradational succession, from shoreface through tidal to fluvial. In order to model the most likely lithofacies stacking patterns present in the core, Markov Chain analysis was conducted. Benchtop measurements performed on 1 inch core plugs obtained rock properties (Vp, Vs, density, permeability, and porosity) for each lithofacies. Average rock properties for each lithofacies were used to generate synthetic seismic reflection models of the different upward fining facies associations documented directly from the core, in order to model variations in amplitude versus offset responses as a function of variable tidal influence. The focus of the second chapter is to capture probable 3-dimensional geobody distributions with a particular focus on coal geobody distribution using previously studied cores and outcrops on the plateau. Three different seismic forward models were created ranging in complexity, using cores EP-25, EP-07, density logs, and the nearby outcrop study Left Hand Collet. The rock properties obtained from the benchtop measurements were used to populate the three models based on different depositional environments at the separate depth slices capturing multiple geomorphic rather than stratigraphic models. A seismic survey was acquired on the plateau using 80 Hz frequency; this produced a high-resolution seismic profile. Comparing the forward seismic model to the acquired seismic profile allows for a conceptual understanding between predictive models of what is expected and what is captured in seismic reflection profiles

Impacts of Alternative Emissions Allowance Allocation Methods Under a Federal Cap-and-Trade Program

This paper employs a dynamic general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy to address the federal cap-and-trap issue. The model’s unique treatment of capital dynamics permits close attention to the impacts of alternative policies on industry profits. We find that freely allocating a relatively small fraction of the emissions allowances generally suffices to prevent profit losses among the eight industries that, without free allowances or other compensation, would suffer the largest percentage losses of profit. Under a wide range of cap-and-trade designs, freely allocating less than 15 percent of the total allowances prevents profit losses to these most vulnerable industries. Allocating 100 percent of the allowances substantially overcompensates these industries, in many cases causing more than a doubling of profits. These results indicate that profit preservation is consistent with substantial use of auctioning and the generation of considerable auction revenue. GDP costs of cap and trade depend critically on how such revenues are used. When these revenues are employed to finance cuts in marginal income tax rates, the resulting GDP costs are about 33 percent lower. On the other hand, when the auction proceeds are returned to the economy in lump-sum fashion, the potential costadvantages of auctioning are not realized.cap-and-trade, environmental legislation, greenhouse gas emissions

Six hats of Ray Baumhart, S J

Photographs not included in Web versio

Production planning and inventory control in job order manufacturing

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston Universit