Grant Recipients

Background and Purpose

We are working to continuously expand research and analysis to support providers, policymakers, and young people themselves in advancing outcomes for transition age youth. Partners, including individuals with lived expertise, communities disproportionately impacted by structural inequities, providers with unique youth connections, and state and county youth-serving agencies, are key to making the research relevant and successful.

In 2023 we selected these researcher grantees – research teams who have demonstrated a commitment to enhancing knowledge about TAY. Their work is generously supported by our partners: the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and Tipping Point Community granted subawards to conduct this research and the Walter S. Johnson Foundation supported the 2024 Transition-Age Youth Research & Evaluation Hub Convening. We invite you to learn more about the findings from these teams. A summary of all completed projects is available here.

The 2024 Grantees and Research

Eunhye Ahn

PhD, MSW, Washington University in St. Louis

Julia Arroyo

PhD, College of Charleston

Sandra Black

PhD, Columbia University

Kristen Ethier

PhD, MSW, Simmons University

Todd M. Franke

PhD, MSW, University of California, Los Angeles

Justin Harty

MSW, Arizona State University

Brianna Harvey

ABD, MSW, CSU, Fullerton

John Paul Horn

PhD, MSW, CSU, East Bay

Sebrena Jackson

PhD, LICSW, University of Alabama

Cornelle A. Jenkins

JD, MBA, Catalyst Center Learning Hub

Dominique Mikell Montgomery

ABD, AM, University of Nevada, Reno

Kate Musen

Columbia University

Lucero Noyola

MSW, University of California, Los Angeles

Carmen Noyola

MUP, University of California, Los Angeles

Toni Naccarato

PhD, MSW, CSU, East Bay

Nathanael Okpych

PhD, MSW, University of Connecticut

Lindsey Palmer

PhD, LCSW, University of Utah

Sunggeun (Ethan) Park

PhD, MBA, MSW, University of Michigan

Selena Liu Raphael

Catalyst Center Learning Hub

Evelyn Karina Rodriguez

Affiliated Researcher

Seedless: A Study on the Higher Education Experiences of Youth Impacted by Foster Care with (Dis)abilites

Photo of DOMINIQUE MIKELL MONTGOMERY ABD, AM
Dominique Mikell Montgomery, PhD, AM, Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Nevada, Reno
Photo of EVELYN KARINA RODRIGUEZ
Evelyn Karina Rodriguez, Artist, 404 FOUND Art Residency

What brought you to this research?

EKR: I became interested in whose knowledge is valued. We talk about “lived experiences” but often it’s patronizing or seen as biased, or just not as important as the knowledge of someone like Dominique, who has a degree and is an expert. This isn’t the case with Dominique but in my community, we talk about people being experts ON us. It’s not a compliment. 

DMM: Like Evelyn said, it’s very interesting for me to look into how we can design studies to bring in this knowledge that’s not traditionally valued. And we start that at the beginning – everything here is co-led by Evelyn and me. 

How does having an academic and an impacted community member co-leading this project change it?

DMM: Everything is different. Normally, you start a research project by evaluating what’s in the field by doing a literature review, and then you try to plug a gap. We started this project differently. We decided that Evelyn should identify needs they saw in their community, and only then did we check to see if the topic had been well covered in the literature (it hadn’t.) 

EKR: Instead of hiring a bunch of grad students to be research assistants, we decided to hire community members who will have that kind of knowledge that allows them to understand the important cultural nuances that we wanted to get at with our study. 

What do you hope changes as a result of your research? 

EKR: Of course I want people to better understand the topic, but I really want people to wake up to the idea that when researching people, you have to know and respect and honor them. Our expertise is valuable and should be included whenever we’re studied. 

DMM: As researchers, we should push ourselves to not just pay lip service to the importance of lived experiences but to fold them into every bit of our work. It’s hard, but it’s critical – not just for reasons of justice, but because it makes the work better. TAY-Hub was one of the few funders who would step up for this kind of work; I hope that more funders follow their lead.

Grantee Interview: Ethan and Justin

Photo of JUSTIN HARTY MSW
Justin Harty- Assistant Professor, School of Social Work & faculty affiliate, Center for Child Well-Being, Arizona State University
Photo of SUNGGEUN (ETHAN) PARK PhD, MBA
Sunggeun (Ethan) Park – Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Michigan

Ethan and Justin are Co-Investigators on two TAY-Hub supported projects:

County-level Variations in Transition-age Youth’s Utilization of Independent Living Programs, and Expectant and Parenting Youth in Foster Care

What brought you to this research?

Justin: I was involved in the child welfare system myself as a young person, and that drove a desire to get my MSW and become a caseworker in Chicago. I found that there was not enough focus on transition-aged youth, and even less focus on parents or expecting parents in that group. I felt like I was always putting on band-aids in my practice and not making long-lasting change, so I went to do my PhD with a focus on this population and never looked back.

Ethan: I wouldn’t call myself a child welfare scholar; I study systems and organizations to understand how they work. I did my undergrad in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, so I’m comfortable working with big data sets. When I met with Mark Courtney (then of CalYOUTH, now the lead at TAY-Hub) and saw all the caseworker-level and county-level data that was being collected but not analyzed I started to become interested in the child welfare system.

How do you manage to work together coming from such different perspectives?

Justin: Think about what we call corporate parenting – when a child is removed from their family and the state has to step in as the parent. That comes with a lot of obligations for the state, and I’m interested in how they’re doing, are the different parts of the state aligning to help the young person. With TAY, there’s an additional responsibility to prepare for adulthood. I understand intimately how that works because of my research and lived experience, but Ethan is able to help me look at the child welfare system as a system.

Ethan: It’s all about bringing different skills and perspectives to the work. Like Justin said, I’m interested in looking at the whole system, doing population analysis, survey analysis, etc. But looking at the quantitative data really is incomplete because you need someone like Justin with the lived and practical experience of the system to validate or challenge the analysis. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s beautiful.

Justin: It really is, and the thing that Ethan can help provide is context. So let’s say we have some finding that makes logical sense to me, and the data seem to back it up – but bringing in additional context (for example, housing prices in an area with high youth homelessness) can really change the way we see the world.

What do you hope to influence with your work?

Ethan: This is a place where TAY-Hub is so useful. In somewhere like California where you have dozens of different county agencies all collecting data, trying to do new things, but unsure of where to focus, TAY-Hub gives them a place to bring the research and practice together in a way that’s useful.

Justin: It’s all about making the research usable for the practitioners. Academic research sits behind paywalls and often isn’t geared towards the people on the ground doing the work, so working with TAY-Hub to turn that research into action is critical.