About Us

The Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub (TAY-Hub) is a university-based research collaborative housed within the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at the University of California, Berkeley. The TAY-Hub specializes in research related to policies and practices affecting transition-age youth by monitoring outcomes and through applied research. This work is grounded in engagement with members of the child welfare services community, including those with lived experience of foster care.

The work of the TAY-Hub is informed by the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH). CalYOUTH began in 2012 in response to California’s adoption of the Federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Fostering Connections). California’s Fostering Connections Act (commonly known as AB12) extended the age of eligibility for foster care from 18 to 21 for transition-age youth (TAY) in foster care.

Coinciding with the conclusion of the CalYOUTH study in 2022, we are launching the TAY-Hub to build upon and enhance California’s capacity to generate and analyze data on TAY in care. The specific goals of the TAY-Hub are to:

• engage the child welfare services community in identifying key topics for research and evaluation that can inform policy and practice targeting TAY;
• conduct research and evaluation activities targeting TAY and sponsor activities of third-party partners;
• support the capacity of the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), county child welfare agencies, and the voluntary sector to use the information generated by research and evaluation to improve policy and practice targeting TAY;
• engage young people and key players providing services to TAY in interpreting the meaning and implications for policy and practice of TAY-Hub research and evaluation findings;
• disseminate the findings of TAY-Hub research and evaluation to the child welfare services policy and practice community and the public; and
• enhance ongoing publicly-available information on the CCWIP website that counties across California currently use as required by the statewide outcomes and accountability system to add new measures of TAY outcomes related to education, employment, use of public benefits, and other outcomes prioritized by our partners.

We hope that demonstrating the success of this kind of public-private partnership in improving services to TAY will lay the groundwork for expanding the work to focus on all children and families involved with the child welfare system.