We believe in a collaborative research process, and engage with the child welfare services community, young adults with foster care experience, and scholars across the country to ensure our research responds to the field’s most pressing needs. Housed within the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, we also maintain a public data portal that provides key insights into TAY outcomes in education and employment.
Our work builds upon the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH), the most comprehensive longitudinal study of TAY exiting foster care and California’s Extended Foster Care (EFC) Program. Since its start in 2012, the CalYOUTH study has provided crucial evidence on the outcomes of young people leaving care and the benefits of extended foster care.
Events & Convenings
In June 2024, we hosted the Transition-Age Youth Research & Evaluation Hub Convening at University of Southern California. During the event, recipients of the 2023-24 Research Subaward presented their findings to an audience of practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and individuals with lived experience in care, fostering an exchange of ideas. It featured four panels covering topics including accessing services, the importance of relationships and identities, policy implementation, and insights from lived experience.
Having researchers that can help to quantify, extrapolate, and provide that feedback to us in a way that we can digest and then be responsive to it and create policies and systems that can actually change in order to meet the needs of real children and families is invaluable.
Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division at the California Department of Social Services
Meet Our Staff
Mark E. Courtney is the Samuel Deutsch Professor emeritus in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago and Distinguished Researcher at the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at the University of California, Berkeley where he co-directs The Transition Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub.
His fields of special interest are child welfare policy and services, the connection between child welfare services and other institutions serving families living in poverty, the transition to adulthood for marginalized populations, and the professionalization of social work. Dr. Courtney is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and the Society for Social Work and Research. He received the 2010 Peter W. Forsythe Award for leadership in public child welfare from National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators and the 2015 Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Research. Dr. Courtney served as Director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago from 2001 to 2006 and was the founding director of Partners for Our Children (POC), a public-private partnership housed at the University of Washington devoted to improving child welfare services. POC received the 2008 American Public Human Services Association Award for Academic Excellence.
Dr. Courtney obtained his MSW and PhD degrees from the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. Before moving into academia, he worked for several years in various capacities providing group home care to abused and neglected adolescents. Dr. Courtney has served as a consultant to the federal government, state departments of social services, local public and private child welfare agencies, and the philanthropic community.
Dr. Andrea Lane Eastman is Co-Director of the Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub with Professor Mark Courtney and an affiliate of the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at UC Berkeley. Her research uses linked, administrative data to document population-level disparities and answer policy relevant questions concerning young people who have contact with child protection and juvenile justice systems. Dr. Eastman serves as Associate Research Professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work with the Children’s Data Network.
Her scholarship has been informed by her previous work in the California State Senate where she served as a legislative aide and committee consultant on several state initiatives surrounding human services and public safety. She graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor’s in Psychology, received her MFT from Pepperdine University, and earned a PhD in Social Work from USC. While obtaining her MFT, she provided therapy for families who experienced child maltreatment.
Sofia Guo is an Associate Specialist at the Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub (TAY-Hub). Dr. Guo’s research uses interdisciplinary analysis methods to inform policies affecting young adults transitioning from foster care, children and families in the child welfare system, and the public child welfare workforce. Dr. Guo earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s in social welfare (MSW), and a PhD in social welfare from UC Berkeley. During her graduate studies, Dr. Guo provided individual and group counseling for elementary school students. Prior to graduate school, she worked as an assistant budget analyst at the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, DC.
Nate is an Associate Professor in the University of Connecticut’s School of Social Work. He studies the transition to adulthood for youth with foster care backgrounds, focusing on factors, policies, and programs aimed at increasing postsecondary education access and success. His research is informed by his professional experience providing mental health services to youth in residential, school, and community settings, as well as working for several years in college residence life. Nate worked on the CalYOUTH Study for over 10 years, first as a Research Assistant and then as the Project Manager and Co-PI. He earned his PhD from the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice at the University of Chicago. He also holds masters degrees in biostatistics and epidemiology (University of Chicago), social work (Rutgers University), and clinical psychology (Duquesne University). You can learn more about Nate’s work and watch 4-minute research briefs at www.nateokpych.com.
Astha Agarwal is a doctoral candidate in School Psychology at Berkeley School of Education and a Graduate Student Researcher at the TAY-Hub. Astha’s doctoral research is focused on pathways through higher education for youth who have been impacted by foster care and/or homelessness, particularly those who also have disabilities and/or behavioral health challenges. Astha also experienced homelessness as a youth and she is a member of the Berkeley Hope Scholars community. Astha earned her MA in Education from UC Berkeley and BA in Psychology and Economics from McGill University.
JaVon joins us as an undergraduate researcher through the Youth Equity Discovery Initiative (YEDI), which engages students in youth equity research aiming to create a pipeline of changemakers committed to addressing challenges young people face.
JaVon is a senior student-athlete majoring in Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley. He also serves as a research assistant with the Risk Resilience Lab on the Playing 4 Change Project, which explores how video games and mental health interventions can support behavioral regulation among youth facing adversity. His research interests lie at the intersection of child welfare policy, educational equity, and mental health. He is particularly interested in understanding how foster care involvement, housing instability, and transitional housing experiences shape young people’s access to educational opportunities, mental health support, and successful transitions into adulthood.
