Planned treatment and outcomes in residential youth care: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractA recurring theme in evaluations of Swedish residential youth care is that treatment is often unplanned. Using a data set of teenagers placed in youth care in 1991 (N=357), we show that planned treatment -in the sense of a known expected duration of treatment -is strongly positively associated with treatment outcomes. In the short term, teenagers with planned treatment are 32 percent less likely to experience a treatment breakdown and 25 percent less likely to be reassigned to other forms of residential care after completed treatment. In the long term, teenagers with planned treatment are 21 percent less likely to engage in criminal behavior and 40 percent less likely to be hospitalized for mental health problems. The results are robust to controlling for a rich set of potentially confounding factors: Even though observable pre-treatment teenager characteristics explain about one fifth of the variation in criminal behavior 5-10 years after treatment, they have almost no predictive power for whether treatment is planned or unplanned.

Listen to the Voices of Unwed Teenage Mothers in Malaysian Shelter Homes: An Explorative Study

“…Special classes should be offered to those who are illiterate. The guidelines should also consider the expected duration for the planned intervention in order to have better outcomes for the residents ( Linqvist, 2011 ). Qualifications and/or training of the social workers in the shelter homes are other areas in need of attention.…”