The Numbers Don’t Lie

In 2022, youth at StepStones did incredible things. 82% of youth are currently attending school or have graduated high school, 86% have obtained stable housing within 6 months in the program, and 75% of youth have stabilized their mental health and/or accessing mental health supports 

Our Impact in 2022

Find the 2022 Impact Report here –>  Our Impact 2022

Our Evaluation Process and Methodology

Research and analysis are critical to understanding how our programs directly improve the trajectories of children, youth, and families involved in child welfare. To maximize impact for youth in our target population, we have learned that it is vital to create comprehensive research and evaluation processes to continually monitor and assess progress. This allows us to focus on achieving intended impacts for better long-term outcomes. We support an organizational process that always brings us back to the “why” of our work and we use this question as our guiding principle.

We implement rigorous methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection, comparative analysis, and evaluation strategies to learn how our programming helps marginalized and racialized youth from foster care overcome systemic barriers to attaining better academic, financial, and mental health outcomes. To assess the effectiveness and impact of our programs on our youth beneficiaries, StepStones conducts interviews with young people upon intake and every six months during the tenure of their involvement. In these interviews, we track the progress of participants in the areas of education and employment, mental health and housing stability, emotional and social skill development, and their growing sense of connection and belonging.

Each successive evaluation allows us to reflect on progress made, as well as areas for service modification or improvement. We consistently review research and data collected on race and outcomes and compare this data to ensure that youth who are racialized in our program achieve similar results and outcomes as non-racialized youth. In addition to tracking the progress of each young person, we will track the number of times mentors and other supportive adults connect with youth, the shared activities they partake in, and the types of workshops they attend. We assess the critical development of trust and an increased sense of belonging, both of which are crucial for educational attainment and improved mental health for our target population, through young people’s growing confidence that they have dependable adults in their lives who are not paid to work with them, who can respond to their needs, who they can celebrate holidays and special occasions with, and who support them in their educational pursuits and along their mental health journeys.

All of our processes and procedures are informed by the voices of young people from the child welfare system and our evaluation activities are guided by their voices regarding program design input, adjustment, and refinement.

In 2023, StepStones undertook a review of all our output definitions and calculations to streamline the data collection process and better capture the demographics of and outcomes for youth across all our programming. Along with an in-depth demographic profile of every youth, within each program and across all of StepStones, we capture information on housing status and housing grants, education, mental health and sense of belonging, service navigation requests and emergency supports, volunteers enlisted, organizational partners, and board members. We also gather impact statements and stories to understand the qualitative and emotional outputs of our programming, which adds depth to the statistics.

Our Learnings

At StepStones we set our goals high. In our perfect world, all youth graduate high school, are pursuing further education or have found meaningful employment, have safe and secure housing, and live with a sense of belonging and positive mental health.

However, statistics across jurisdictions and countries show that youth from foster care who are transitioning to adulthood face far greater challenges and experience poorer life outcomes compared to their peers who were not in care. These outcomes include lower educational attainment, difficulty obtaining employment, housing instability, and involvement in the criminal justice system.

StepStones programming helps mitigate the negative consequences of aging out of care, however, there are outcomes that can be improved as we work towards individual and systemic changes. Based on the data from our intake interviews with each youth and subsequent data collection every six months that the youth is involved with StepStones, we are able to track their progress while also using the data trends to inform and improve our programming.

Here are three examples of changes we made to our programs in recent years based on our learnings from data collection and reporting:

Numbers of Connections for Youth

Our original concept for our work to find permanency for youth was based on research and models that had been showing some evidence of success.  One such model, demonstrated that they were able to identify over 100 relatives or connections within 30 days at the time of a child’s apprehension. We learned that this metric doesn’t apply for older youth who have been living in foster care for longer periods of time. We found youth in our program to be apprehensive about connecting with members of their extended family due to the traumas that resulted in their apprehension, as well as the trauma of apprehension and their experience of instability in the foster care system. We also realized that the metric of finding 100 connections for each young person was creating barriers to positive connections that are found quickly. In several instances, individuals would agree to become primary caregivers while we would still be in the stages of seeking further individuals to reach our intended metric, thus stalling the progress of the secured connections. We now understand further that the permanency work must continue even after young people have been matched with primary caregivers so that they can continue to build circles of support in their lives. To improve the outcomes for young people in our program regarding connection and permanency, we reduced the intended number of connections to 50, as well as the number of individuals in each youth’s circle of support from 8 to 5, to excellent results. 

Caregiver and Parent Support 

When working with adults in young people’s lives, we have found that adults who have pre-existing relationships with young people were not as keen on attending formalized education programs, however informal training has worked very well for them and has included being connected with other individuals going through similar processes, one-to-one support with StepStones’ Connection Coordinators to be able to phone them with questions that arise, and providing them with specific resources in areas of need for youth such as suicide ideation. This informal, case-by-case training and support helps caregivers and parents in our program feel a sense of individualization and that their relationship with the young person is being regarded as unique and meriting unique support. New volunteers in the program, such as community members, are engaging with formal education programs to support young people.

Group vs Individual Work 

In working with young people, our original intention was to build comradery and increase a sense of trust by engaging youth in group retreats in the initial stages of their time at StepStones. We found, over time, that youth were less open to sharing their histories and experiences in a group setting as they were with a one-to-one Connection Coordinator. We found that doing mobility mapping in groups is not as effective as doing it individually as it brings up personal stories, experiences of trauma, and information that youth do not feel comfortable exposing in group settings. We have found that a one-to-one Connection Coordinator, working with a young person to go through their histories, builds trust in this process, allows youth to examine their life and needs in a supportive environment, and produces better results for building connections and finding long-term success. 

High School

  • 82% of youth in our program have either graduated or are attending high school.
  • In Ontario, only 44% of youth from the foster care system graduate from high school compared to 83% of the general population.

Mental Health

  • 7% of youth at intake identified as having stable mental health. After 12 months in our program, 75% of youth have stabilized their mental health and/or are accessing mental health supports. Youth from foster care, many of whom suffer from trauma-related mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress, are being supported or receiving treatment from physicians and counsellors, access to yoga and meditation, and regular appointments with their Youth Connection Support Worker.

Housing

  • After 6 months in the StepStones program, 86% of youth reported stable housing.

Program Outputs and Outcomes

These year-to-year comparisons highlight key outputs and outcomes for youth in our program. Some metrics were not reported on prior to 2022 as we pivoted our modes of service to be able to offer urgently required supports to young people necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CategoryOutput/OutcomeHow it’s Calculated2020 Target2020 Actual2021 Target2021 Actual2022 Target2022 Actual2023 Target2024 Target
Life-SkillsWorkshops and Events HeldThe total number of workshops, community events, and gatherings facilitated by StepStones staff for youth in our program and prospective youth5055502050515560
HousingHousing Subsidies Facilitate for YouthThe number of 1 month rental subsidies distributed to a youth in our programs each year759090117120140140150
Mental HealthHours of Supportive Counselling and Service Navigation Provided The number of hours of free support, therapy and counselling offered to youth in our programs100013702000935010,00014,56012,00014,000
HousingYouth who reported having stable housing after 6 months of receiving housing support at StepStonesBased on youth reporting done every 6 months by their StepStones Connections Worker. Stable housing excludes living arrangements such as couch surfing, temporary/overnight shelters, homes with pending evictions, and homelessness.75%86%80%82%
EducationYouth in our program that have either graduated or are attending high schoolBased on youth reporting done every 6 months by their StepStones Connections Worker. Includes all youth in our program with a high school diploma and those that are actively engaged with high school school. Youth excluded are those without a diploma who are not pursuing one. 78%82%79%80%
Mental HealthYouth who have stabilized their mental health and/or are accessing mental health supportsBased on youth reporting done every 6 months by their StepStones Connections Worker. Stable mental health excludes those with recurrent mental helath symptoms that may affect behaviour but are not a danger to themselves or others, as well as those who experience suicidal ideation, severe difficulty day-to-day and are a danger to themselves and others. Of youth that are excluded we identify how many of them are currently accedding mental health supports. 73%75%78%81%

Youth Demographics

Understand more about the youth we serve who we reach with our program in 2022.

Number of Youth Served in our Program312
Youth that Identify as a Person of Colour65.4%
Youth that Identify as Black38%
Youth that Identify as Indigenous4%
Youth that Identify as 2SLGBTQ+21%

Previous Year’s Impact Reports