CINCINNATI — Maleek Rhaheem was only 5 when he saw the police drag his screaming mother out of their home. He was 9 when his drug-dealing dad got shot to death. He was 14 when his grandma died, and that's when he wound up in foster care.....

.....In 2015 in Hamilton County alone, 84 former foster youth aged out. That's down from 116 in 2010 because of the emphasis county officials have placed on helping teens reunite with family or find adoptive homes before they leave the system, said Moira Weir, director of Hamilton County's Department of Job & Family Services.....

.....Founded in 1999, YVLifeset is a program of Youth Villages, a Tennessee-based nonprofit organization that works with troubled children and their families. YVLifeset focuses on working with youth aging out of foster care and those who were in juvenile justice custody as teenagers. The program helps them identify their goals, find stable housing, begin college, find jobs and manage their money. It also works to make sure young people have health insurance and get the mental health services they need.

When possible, YVLifeset helps former foster youth reconcile with their biological family members. And, especially when that's not possible, the program helps them build new relationships with adults they can trust. YVLifeset does all that through specialists who work closely with the former foster youth, said Mary Lee, YVLifeset's national coordinator and a former foster youth herself.

Each YVLifeset specialist has a caseload that is limited to about eight young people, she said, and they're often recent college graduates who are just a few years older than the young people they are helping.

"They're responsible for that young person's success," she said.

The specialists are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week and meet with each young person face-to-face at least weekly, Lee said.

"We don't just let young people disappear," she said. "If a young person misses a session, the specialist is calling, texting, going by the apartment, work or school. We take responsibility for making sure the young person stays in services."

There's evidence that the YVLifeset approach works. The social policy research organization MDRC and the University of Chicago's Mark Courtney released a study in May 2015 that found the YVLifeset program had a positive impact on youth who aged out of foster care or were in juvenile justice custody as teens.....

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