Since 1977, Minnesota has established 17 shelter care facilities in response to State and Federal laws mandating alternatives to the secure detention of status offenders. This evaluation reviewed two group homes in the community which can house up to six juveniles and five foster home programs which usually limit families to one juvenile at a time. Although some treatment services are offered, the primary function of these facilities is to detain status offenders and dependent or neglected youths in a nonsecure setting. A shelter's runaway rate generally was under 10 percent. No major differences between the numbers of status offenders and delinquents who ran away were found, but nonoffenders had a significantly lower rate. Some projects had violated State laws by failing to obtain a court order to hold a juvenile for more than 24 hours and not providing a hearing when a juvenile was detained more than 36 hours. Juveniles can be referred to a shelter without a formal charge, and although most referrals have been from law enforcement agencies, an increasing number have come from social services. The majority of juveniles referred to both residential homes and foster families have been status offenders, but this percentage has declined over time. Most juveniles were between 13-and 17-years old and about 60 percent were female. Over half had no prior offense history. Stays in the shelter ranged from less than 1 day to 65 days, but 8 days or less was the length of detention of 64.8 percent of juveniles in the residential and 76.7 percent in foster homes. In analyzing costs, three options were studied; the residential facility, a foster family paid a per diem, and a foster family using a perdiem and a retainer fee. Costeffectiveness was related to the size of the population being served, with residential facilities being most appropriate for larger numbers, followed by foster homes on retainers. Estimated costs of proposed shelters could be based on type of system desired, number of juveniles detained, and length of stay. Personnel and training costs varied among the projects. The report includes 15 statistical tables.