Care Transition Efficiency & Placement Outcome Analytics

Abstract

The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) operates as a multi-stage care and reunification pipeline, receiving children from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and facilitating their placement with vetted sponsors. While aggregate custody counts are monitored publicly, process efficiency metrics that capture the speed, continuity, and outcome quality of care transitions remain largely absent from published reporting frameworks. This paper presents a systematic, data-driven analysis of the UAC care pipeline using daily operational data spanning January 2023 through December 2025. Five Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are engineered from the raw dataset: Transfer Efficiency Ratio, Discharge Effectiveness Index, Pipeline Throughput Rate, Backlog Accumulation Rate, and Outcome Stability Score. Temporal analysis, bottleneck detection, and stagnation period identification are applied to characterize system performance across three distinct operational regimes corresponding to different policy environments. Key findings reveal that 393 of 720 reporting days (54.6%) triggered at least one process bottleneck; that all nine detected stagnation periods occurred exclusively in 2025; that total annual sponsor placements fell from 66,244 (2023) to 6,920 (2025), representing a 89.5% decline; and that the 72-hour CBP-to-HHS transfer mandate was systematically breached throughout the second half of 2025. These findings provide actionable insights for policymakers, case managers, and program administrators seeking to improve reunification timelines and child welfare outcomes. These findings are optionalised in an accompanying Streamlit web dashboard enabling real-time interactive exploration of all five KPIs.

Keywords: Unaccompanied Alien Children, UAC, ORR, CBP, Care Pipeline, Process Efficiency, KPI, Transfer Efficiency, Discharge Effectiveness, Bottleneck Detection, Child Welfare, Reunification