Thursday's Child: Runaway and Homeless Youth: Prevalence, Programs, and Policy

Thursday, April 8, 2010 • 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m. ET
Urban Institute
2100 M Street, N.W., 5th Floor

Patrick Boyle (moderator) is the editor of Youth Today, the national trade newspaper for people who run youth programs, and a parenting blogger for the Huffington Post. He has written about child and family issues for The Washington Post, Newsday, The Baltimore Sun,and several parenting magazines, teaches at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and is the author of Scouts' Honor, which examined sex abuse in the Boy Scouts of America.

Amy Dworsky is a senior researcher at the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall. Much of her work focuses on youth aging out of foster care. Dworsky is a co-investigator for the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth and the principal investigator for a study examining a job training and placement program for foster youth in Chicago.  She recently completed a comprehensive review of policies and programs designed to support youth transitioning out of foster care across the 50 states and the District of Columbia.  

Hedda McLendon is the deputy director of the Social Services Division at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, D.C. The division's programming includes substance abuse and mental health treatment, child placement, reentry support services, health promotion, care for runaway homeless youth, and foster care residences. Previously, she was the learning and evaluation specialist at LAYC, overseeing research and evaluation and training staff on data collection, evaluation, and data management. She has also been a research assistant for LAYC's HIV, STI, and Substance Abuse Prevention Program. 

Michael Pergamit, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, is a labor economist focusing on youth issues, especially youth labor-market outcomes, the transition from school to work, and the transition into adulthood. His recent projects include exploring the relationship between growing up in a vulnerable family and movement into education and the labor market as a young adult and an examination of how former foster youth in Los Angeles are faring at age 19. Pergamit spent 10 years at the National Opinion Research Center and 13 years at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as the director of the national longitudinal surveys. 

Bryan Samuels is the commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As the chief of staff for Chicago Public Schools, he was a leader in managing the nation's third largest school system. From 2003 to 2007, he was the director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the nation's third largest child welfare agency. During his tenure, the agency established the lowest caseload ratios for case managers in the nation, reduced the number of youth "on the run" by 40 percent and number of days on the run by 50 percent, and decreased the use of residential treatment or group homes by 20 percent.