In addition to creating the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program, the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 requires the Administration for Children and Families to create a National Youth in Transition Database. It will be used to track the Chafee-funded independent living services that states provide to foster youth, as well as to assess each state’s performance as measured by foster youth outcomes.

The American Public Human Services Association, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and the Center for State Foster Care and Adoption Data proposed working with interested states to: (1) assess states’ willingness and capacity to develop a collective approach for tracking youth and collecting data; (2) document the “state of states” in terms of current tracking and data collection strategies; (3) develop an architectural blueprint that would assist states in their efforts to comply with the National Youth in Transition Database requirements; and (4) design a survey instrument that all states could use that would not only meet, but also exceed, those requirements with respect to outcome measures.

The rationale behind the proposal was twofold. First, if states are given an opportunity to work together, they can reduce the costs that each individual state must bear and develop a uniform tracking and data collection system in which their data is be comparable. Second, if states really want to know how their foster youth are faring and how their provision of Chafee-funded services might be improved, they need to go beyond the data the federal government is requiring them to collect and measure outcomes in greater breadth and depth.