Sooner or later, all youth leave the child welfare system, ready or not. Many communities are developing program strategies in which youth can get some experience living independently, while still in custody. Since I took over our agency’s ILP, people have asked me if we were properly diagnosed before we started placing youth in their own apartments. 20 years later, the question still comes up now and then and only my wife and staff know the answer.

The truth is, when a youth leaves his place of residence and is out in the community, it doesn’t matter whether he lives in a foster or group home, residential treatment center or scattered-site apartment. If he is looking for trouble, he will find it. From our experience, most of our agency youths’ assault, runaway, destruction of property and theft charges happen while they are at home or living in supervised settings. In other words, even with 60-80 youth living on their own, we don’t experience any more or less problems than occur in any placement setting.

Be that as it may, this doesn’t mean that youth in individual scattered-site apartment or semi-supervised group living situation need no attention. Here is a summary of what I learned about supervising youth in ILP’s:

Live-in staff- Some programs have apartments with live-in adult roommates or small shared-homes with a live-in resident manager who is in and out of the residence at various times. There will be time where there is no supervision but the adult is present at night and various times during the week and weekend. Add random visits by day staff and this situation can work for semi-responsible youth.

Daily visits by staff- This is hard to provide due to caseload size and budget limitations, but some programs have found that high risk youth can do well with this level of supervision.

Unannounced visits- This strategy is sometimes effective when youth are breaking program rules or there are reports of illegal or unusual activities going on. Youth need to be informed that this is a possibility at all times but is usually only used when there are problems being reported.

Weekly visits- This is the typical scattered-site method of keeping an eye on a youth living alone. Along with regular phone contact, phone texting and even e-mails, youth and adults can feel at ease.

Youth come to the ILP office- This can be a daily expectation for new or unproductive youth or happen several times a week. We all know youth who show up daily even when not required.

Former foster parents are contracted to monitor a youth- our program has done this with youth who are leaving a foster home in a rural area. This builds on an existing positive relationship and cuts down on ILP staff travel time and expenses.

An ILP contract with an in-town person (with social services experience) for monitoring- We’ve done this for youth who leave a placement situation in a distant community but are connected to school and work and want to remain in that area.

Regular phone contacts- If a youth is struggling with behavioral or medical problems, this is a good way to keep on top of the situation. Asking the youth to call the office daily to report activities is sometimes an expectation for new clients.

Weekly visits by volunteers, mentors, student interns-Often, programs have support staff who do home visits, one-on-one life skills training or in-home counseling. These visits can take the place or enhance paid staff visits.

Electronic monitoring bracelets with an early curfew- Our program requires this for high-risk youth who enter the program with felony offenses. Youth can have them removed after meeting the terms of a behavioral contract usually after 4-6 weeks.

We’ll save the discussion about global positioning earrings and pulse-emitting dental implants for a future column.