Homeless families in St. Louis: A report from the field

In May, June, and September of 1998, 169 residents of the largest homeless shelter in Missouri were surveyed in response to the Institute for Children and Poverty's February 1998 request to continue research on homeless families in other areas of the country. Our findings corroborate the New York City data of the Institute for Children and Poverty (ICP), with these notable differences: ” For the women in our study, the experience of childhood violence and abuse was significantly higher than that reported in the ICP study. ” The number of children in homeless single-parent families in which the parent is beyond childbearing years was higher than the ICP-reported average (2.7 children). ” Older respondents were more likely to have graduated from high school than younger respondents. ” Compared to the ICP´ is respondents, fewer of our survey's respondents had previously lived on their own and more had stayed with family and friends. ” Significantly more residents in our study had no medical insurance. In addition, ” We gathered information on how many non-high school graduates had earned their GED and how many had attended or graduated from college. ” Our respondents were asked in what career fields they wanted to work. ” We gathered data on nicotine, alcohol, and drug abuse among our residents. ” We asked respondents if their children had the same father. Based on this survey, we concluded that programs for homeless children aimed at keeping them in school, improving their education, and helping them to form and realize career goals—as well as services such as counseling and mentoring—are necessary to keep homeless children from becoming homeless adults.     

Homeless students and resilience: Staff perspectives on individual and environmental factors

The resilience paradigm identifies key contributors to children's competence despite adversity, and offers a theoretical framework for supporting the healthy development of children and youth who are homeless. This study used a resilience framework to gather and analyze the perspectives of staff members about homeless children's characteristics, needs, and recommended interventions across different types of homeless education programs.     

美国《离家出走和无家可归青少年法案》综述研究

《离家出走和无家可归青少年法案》是美国在流浪儿童救助领域最为重要的法律之一。它的出台标志着美国联邦政府在制度与经费上全面介入了流浪儿童救助领域。也体现出美国社会对于流浪儿童的观念从“麻烦制造者”向“社会问题受害者”的转变。该法案包括三项主要救助计划,在美国流浪儿童的生活、教育、健康、就业等方面发挥了积极作用,但也存在导致部分流浪儿童更为边缘化的风险。     

Shaping Street-Children Organizations Across the Americas

Abstract

Covenant House, a non-governmental, social action organization assisting homeless children in the United States is compared and contrasted with its Latin American counterpart organization, Casa Alianza, which services street-living and street-working children throughout Mexico and Central America. Although Covenant House and Casa Alianza share a common mission: to protect children and guarantee their rights through promoting social justice, clear differences in organizational structure, program philosophy, intervention techniques and client characteristics are evident ltural contexts within which both organizations are embedded reveals how surrounding macrofactors can influence and uniquely shape social action organizations in their efforts to develop and deliver systematic and indigenous responses to the homeless, street-children population throughout the Americas.     

Predictors of employment among sheltered homeless women

The effect of homelessness on the psychological and physical health of women is damaging and long lasting. Understanding of the personal factors that enable homeless women to secure employment and re-enter mainstream society is of utmost importance. A sample of homeless women residing in a US Midwestern nonprofit treatment and transitional living shelter for homeless women and their children were surveyed regarding the extent to which life satisfaction, social self-efficacy, and hopeful thinking predicted women's expected capabilities to obtain employment above and beyond social support provisions, while controlling for participants' age, ethnicity, and education level. Findings failed to reveal that social psychological (i.e., life satisfaction and social self-efficacy) and intrapersonal (i.e., hope) variables predicted homeless women's job procurement self-efficacy above and beyond perceived social support. The social support provision of social integration and younger age significantly predicted women's self-efficacy to secure employment. Implications of results for social justice initiatives and interventions are discussed.     

Our Divorce Culture: A Durkheimian Perspective

Comparative studies of children from divorced and intact families consistently find that children of divorced marriages have more short- and long-term psychological and social issues than children from intact marriages. This has led to the need for an evaluation of our divorce culture. The purpose of this research is to analyze the general population's attitudes on divorce involving children by gender, race, age, socioeconomic status, and participation in religious activities to see if our opinion of divorce is corresponding to the reality of its effect on children. Research-based divorce education programs have been shown to produce positive results in social and psychological readjustment for both children and adults. The findings of this study allow research-based divorce education programs to identify where to focus their services for children and adults. In addition, these findings support the implementation of policy to mandate the development of research-based divorce education programs in each state.     

Homeless mothers and depression: misdirected policy.

This paper is a critique of recent service-intensive shelter programs for homeless mothers and the policies that underlie these shelters. We first document the process by which mental health problems and family homelessness became so closely but mistakenly linked. We then demonstrate empirically that shelter programs for homeless families nonetheless presume that mental health problems are part of the causal nexus of family homelessness and indiscriminately deliver mental health services to homeless mothers. Simultaneously, shelter programs encourage the isolation of their residents from what they presume to be their "problematic" social networks. We show that, while mental health services had little impact on depression levels among homeless mothers, isolation from social networks did increase depression among homeless mothers. Our findings suggest that policy should put more emphasis on rapid reintegration into the community through providing housing, and it should put less emphasis on providing services.     

The added impact of parenting education in early childhood education programs: A meta-analysis

Many early childhood education (ECE) programs seek to enhance parents' capacities to support their children's development. Using a meta-analytic database of 46 studies of ECE programs that served children age three to five-years-old, we examine the benefits to children's cognitive and pre-academic skills of adding parenting education to ECE programs for children and consider the differential impacts of: 1) parenting education programs of any type; 2) parenting education programs that provided parents with modeling of or opportunities to practice stimulating behaviors and 3) parenting education programs that were delivered through intensive home visiting. The results of the study call into question some general longstanding assertions regarding the benefits of including parenting education in early childhood programs. We find no differences in program impacts between ECE programs that did and did not provide some form of parenting education. We find some suggestive evidence that among ECE programs that provided parenting education, those that provided parents with opportunities to practice parenting skills were associated with greater short-term impacts on children's pre-academic skills. Among ECE programs that provided parenting education, those that did so through one or more home visits a month yielded effect sizes for cognitive outcomes that were significantly larger than programs that provided lower dosages of home visits.     

Larkin Street Youth Services: helping kids get off the street for good (1982-2007)

Larkin Street Youth Services is a pioneering nonprofit organization that was established in 1981 to serve the growing urban homeless and runaway youth population. What began as a neighborhood effort has evolved into a $12 million organization over the course of its 25-year history. Larkin Street Youth Services delivers a continuum of services to homeless youth including counseling, housing, education, employment, and HIV services. The agency has received significant local and national attention for the success of its targeted program model and continuum of care services. The history of Larkin Street Youth Services provides an example of the important role of internal operations in an agency's ability to re-invent itself and respond to a larger community need.     

Social Work Practice and Education in México

Social work education and practice in Mexico has emphasized need for social change, family, and community involvement. Education includes casework, group work, and community organization with extensive field work experience that is community based. Education programs rely heavily on literature from South American countries including liberation theory such as that espoused by Paolo Friere. Social work education at the college level prepares graduates for practice, with a licencia. Social Workers in Mexico work in medical settings, children's services, rehabilitation, family services, work settings and a variety of community based programs. Mexico has begun to develop graduate education. Education in the US, Canada, Mexico and other countries could be enhanced with further exchanges of faculty, students and literature.     

Creating a Family Centered Wellness Team: Lessons learned in creating an integrated continuum of care for families facing homelessness,addiction, and trauma recovery.

Abstract

Homelessness is often experienced by women and children, and recent evidence suggests that women and children are the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. Homelessness is often accompanied by mental illness, substance abuse, and histories of violence, for both women and their children. While trauma informed care has been incorporated into women's treatment systems there has not been widespread application of this knowledge to family centered work with homeless families. This paper explores the need for family strengthening approaches and identifies one model currently being evaluated that seeks to decrease service fragmentation, increase positive family interaction, and deepen the family's connections with each other and with the community.     

The Health Education Section: 38 Years of Growth

Abstract

The author traces the growth of ACHA's Health Education Section from its beginnings with a handful of members in the late 1950s to its position of increasing leadership in the organization. She describes the growth of innovative programs the section's more than 300 health educators developed as they expanded the concept of health education and promotion beyond the walls of traditional health centers into the broader university community. College health educators must participate in efforts to establish accountability for prevention and promotion strategies that include community health as well as clinical preventive services.     

Remembering,Apologies, and Truth: Challenges for Social Work Today

Abstract

In 2003, over 41?000 families with accompanying children throughout Australia were assisted by homeless services. Sole fathers with children in their care who are homeless are a minority group within this overall population of homeless families and, as such, little is known about their experiences of homelessness and fathering. The present paper reports on an exploratory study of sole fathers with children in their care who were homeless in the Australian Capital Territory. The study identifies the fathers’ pathways into and experiences of homelessness, and the fathers share their stories of what it means to be a sole father. The paper identifies the issues fathers may experience when dealing with homelessness and fatherhood. An increased understanding of these experiences can contribute to the development of further research and improved practice with such families.     

A Theory of Mental Health and Optimal Service Delivery for Homeless Children

Homeless children are a vulnerable group with high risk for developing mental health disorders. The pathways to disorders among homeless children have not been fully elucidated, with significant logistical and measurement issues challenging accurate and thorough assessment of need. The environments of homeless children are uniquely chaotic, marked by frequent moves, family structure changes, household and neighborhood disorder, parenting distress, and lack of continuous services. Despite high rates of service use, mental health outcomes remain poor. This paper reviews the literature on homeless children’s mental health, as well as prior theoretical explorations. Finally, the paper proposes a theoretical model that explains elevated rates of mental health problems among homeless children as consequences of harmful stress reactions triggered by chronic household instability along with repeated service disruptions. This model draws upon existing conceptual frameworks of child development, family poverty, health services utilization, and the biology of stress to clarify the role of environmental chaos in the development of child emotional and behavioral problems. Potential strategies to mitigate the risk for mental health disorders among homeless children and future research directions are discussed.     

Program evaluation of services for the homeless : Challenges and strategies

The rapid growth of the homeless population in North America has given rise to a sharp increase in the number of task forces and studies aimed at setting up either programs for the homeless, or policies for controlling the phenomenon. Whenever there is a need for program evaluations in this process, numerous methodological and strategic challenges have to be faced. Due to the characteristics of the clientele, evaluation studies of services for the homeless call for innovative approaches. This paper reviews the research strategies (types of evaluations, designs, and indicators) that have been developed to assess programs for chronic inebriates and mentally ill homeless. The findings from previous evaluations are then summarized and their consequences for evaluation practice are considered.     

The neglected priority: sexual abuse in the context of residential child care

In 1995, a questionnaire was sent to Scotland's residential child care services. Of 89 questions, five concerned sexual abuse. Responses were analysed along several variables—service type, gender and age of residents. A detailed report was compiled (Lindsay, 1997). The response rate was 94% of all Scottish services. The largest group of services were children's homes (112–49%), then residential schools (43–19%), residential respite care (28–12%), care leavers services (16–7%), services for young homeless people (15–7%) and secure units (5–3%), with other service types seven (3%). Two‐thirds of services believed they were caring for children who had been abused and one third for children who had abused others. Where children who had abused others were present, in 91% there were also abused children in the same service. The results were consistent across the variables. In a few cases, allegations of abuse had been made against staff. This was commoner in services for males than females. Staff requested more training and support in their stressful role. These findings have implications for the practice and training of residential staff, management policies and procedure and the design of new services. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Homeless in America: A children's story

Each night across America more than one million children are homeless. They and their parents now account for 38% of America's homeless. They are also the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. The demand for emergency shelter by families with children has increased 50% since 1995 and 15% in the last year alone. Despite the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years and a booming stock market, the number of homeless children today is higher than at any other time since the Great Depression. Throughout the early part of 1999, the Institute for Children and Poverty surveyed almost 2,000 families with more than 4,000 children in 24 locations to assess the state of homeless children across America. This report is their story—a story of constant upheaval, educational struggles, declining health, and violence. It is also a story of opportunity for those with the will and the power to influence policy and create change.