Office of Children and Family Services

Identifying and Treating Youth Needs

The Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) operates residential facilities for young people placed in its custody by courts. The youths in these facilities are to receive rehabilitative services that will enable them to return to their communities. We examined the actions taken by facilities in identifying and providing the rehabilitative services needed for a judgmental sample of 100 youths. We found that required actions were not always taken by the facilities to identify needed services, and even when needed services were identified, the services were not always provided by the facilities. For example, even though it was determined that 55 of the 100 youths in our sample needed services to address substance abuse problems, these services were not provided by the facilities to 20 of the 55 youths. We further determined that many of the youths were not monitored as closely as required after they returned to their communities. We recommend that OCFS officials improve the performance of the residential facilities ,and systematically assess the extent to which rehabilitative goals are met by the facilities.

For a complete copy of Report 97-S-5 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.