Stability in the Social Support Networks of Homeless Families in Shelter: Findings From a Study of Families in a Faith-Based Shelter Program

The following article outlines a longitudinal study tracking changes of the social support networks of 28 homeless families in shelter. Weekly changes in support networks of homeless mothers were tracked including 482 dyadic ties between mothers and supportive persons. Findings suggested that informal social support and persons who provided emotional support were significantly more stable forms of support in the mothers' lives throughout their shelter stay. Time was found to be a significant predictor of financial well-being and housing stability at shelter exit, but characteristics of the supportive ties were not. Implications for family social work and research practice are presented.     

Is anybody there? Informal supports accessed and sought by youth from foster care

Young people's ‘ageing out’ of foster care has been described as stark and abrupt, in sharp contrast with the gradual process of transitioning to adulthood experienced by parented youth in the general population. Research has demonstrated that being supported during this transition is associated with a variety of health, social, and educational outcomes. The purpose of this article is to report former foster youths' perspectives on their informal supports, what difference these supports made for them, and what they believed would be useful in their transition to adulthood. Data came from semi-structured interviews with 43 former foster youth aged 19–26. Findings revealed that while approximately half the informants reported having support from family, most did not have family whom they regularly relied upon for emotional, practical and/or financial support. Further, while nearly all youths indicated that having support made a difference to them, many also noted that for daily living, they were on their own. The study's findings are an important reminder of the gulf existing between youth from care and parented youth in terms of their access to support during their journey to adulthood.     

Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the ‘effects’ of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio‐economic, physical health, emotional well‐being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further rein‐forced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.     

Diversity in social support by role relations: A typology

Social support is fundamental for social integration and emotional well-being. One aspect of social support that is often the focus of attention is the size of a person's support network. However, additional complex measures of social support are necessary to capture qualitative aspects of support networks, such as the diversity in types of support available from specific types of alters. This paper presents a simple way to acquire this comprehensive information and a condensed way to represent the complexity of a person's support network so this information can easily be included in classic survey analyses. Log-linear latent class analysis is used to construct a typology of ego-centric support networks showing the types of support respondents can expect from alters with a specific role. Depending on the role relation for the five support items, this diversity can adequately be represented by distinguishing 2–4 types of respondents. For the role relation friends, we can differentiate between respondents who expect only companionship from their friends, those expecting emotional support as well as companionship, and respondents expecting no social support at all from their friends. For immediate kin, we find those with only emotional support, those with emotional and instrumental support, those with all types of support, and finally a group of respondents expecting no support at all from immediate kin. The approach presented in this article enables a more detailed measurement of the dimensions of social support contents by managing to compile the diversity by distinguishing types of respondents. Such typologies can easily be used as explanatory variables in subsequent analyses.     

Cross-informant agreement of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale for youth in community mental health settings

Comprehensive assessment of youths' emotional and behavioral functioning includes obtaining data from multiple sources, such as parents and youth. Despite the shift in focus on youths' strengths and the increased availability of strength-based assessments, few studies have examined the cross-informant agreement between multiple raters of youths' behavioral and emotional strengths. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the cross-informant agreement between parent and youth ratings on the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale-Second Edition (BERS-2). The current study extends previous cross-informant research by examining the cross-informant agreement between parent and self-report ratings for youth served in community mental health centers and whether differences in cross-informant agreement exist between youth with and without a school-identified disability. Results indicated that cross-informant agreement on youths' strengths was acceptable, as most obtained correlations were greater than those typically reported on cross-informant agreement on deficit-based instruments. Furthermore, small but significant differences in cross-informant agreement for youth with and without a school-identified disability were observed for the BERS-2 Affective Strengths and School Functioning subscales. Overall, findings provide support for the reliability of multiple informants' ratings on the BERS-2 for measuring the strengths of youth referred for community mental health services.     

Associations Between Social Support Network Characteristics and Receipt of Emotional and Material Support Among a Sample of Male Sexual Minority Youths

Few studies have examined how social support network characteristics are related to perceived receipt of social support among male sexual minority youths. Using egocentric network data collected from a study of male sexual minority youths (N = 592), multivariable logistic regression analyses examined distinct associations between individual and social network characteristics with receipt of (1) emotional and (2) material support. In multivariable models, frequent communication and having friends in one's network yielded a twofold increase in the likelihood of receiving emotional support whereas frequent communication was associated with an almost threefold higher likelihood of perceived material support. Finally, greater internalized homophobia and personal experiences of gay-related stigma were inversely associated with perceived receipt of emotional and material support, respectively. Understanding the evolving social context and social interactions of this new generation of male sexual minority youths is warranted in order to understand the broader, contextual factors associated with their overall health and well-being.     

Development of a framework for classifying threat and neglect in childhood: A qualitative study

Quantification of childhood adversity has typically involved a cumulative risk approach in which total number of discrete adversities serves as an index of overall risk. However, this approach fails to account for the growing evidence of differential outcomes following exposure to childhood adversities. An alternative approach adopts a dimensional perspective, with growing evidence for distinct developmental impacts associated with exposure to threat (violence/abuse) and deprivation (neglect). This study developed a framework for the classification of these dimensions through a thematic analysis of health practitioners' views and accounts of different forms of childhood adversity. Ten health practitioners experienced in working with children with challenging behaviours and neurodevelopmental disorders participated in semi-structured interviews regarding definitions and examples of six categories of adversity: physical/emotional/sexual abuse, physical/emotional neglect, and domestic and family violence. The qualitative analysis identified 23 themes across the six categories of adversity, along with two overarching themes regarding ambiguity of classifying exposures and non-specific outcomes of exposures. Themes were integrated to provide a framework and checklist for classifying indicators of exposure to threat and deprivation. The findings offer a framework and checklist for the assessment of threat and deprivation that will allow for further testing of the dimensional risk model.     

Do they get what they expect?: The connection between young adults' future expectations before leaving care and outcomes after leaving care

This study examines the future expectations of young people in out-of-home placements in the last year before leaving care and the association between those expectations and their outcomes after leaving care. The study examines the hypothesis that care leavers with higher future expectations will have better outcomes in the areas of housing, educational achievements, economic status, adjustment to military service, and life satisfaction. The study was conducted through 277 interviews with the young adults at their last year in care and 236 interviews a year after they left care. Higher future expectations while in care were positively correlated with satisfaction in accommodation, economic status and educational achievements and adjustment to required military service after leaving care. These findings emphasize the role of future expectations as a source of resilience and motivation. They also illustrate the importance of designing programs that address care leavers' self-perception and future outlook and offer preparation in concrete areas as the youth transition to adult life.     

The early home environment and developmental outcomes for young children in the child welfare system

The quality of the early home environment is predictive of young children's subsequent cognitive, academic, and behavioral functioning. Limited research has focused on the effects of the early caregiving environment on the functioning of young children involved with the child welfare system. This study investigated the influence of children's home environments (i.e., number of children in the home, number of moves the child experienced, level of cognitive stimulation, and level of emotional support) during the first 2 years of life on their preschool developmental outcomes (i.e., cognition, language, social skills, and behavior problems).As anticipated, a high-quality early home environment promoted the well-being of preschool children who had entered the child welfare system as infants. Children who lived with greater numbers of children incurred more compromised cognitive, language, behavioral, and social outcomes. No significant associations emerged between the total number of placements and developmental outcomes; children who remained in the same home during infancy (typically the birth family home) had more compromised developmental outcomes in every domain except behavioral problems.Both cognitive stimulation and emotional support in the home predicted higher cognitive and language scores, decreased behavioral problems, and increased social skills. Early out-of-home placement and lack of emotional support interacted to predict children's behavioral problems. These findings are considered in the context of extant research and policy relevant to young children in the child welfare system.     

Childhood adversity,sense of belonging and psychosocial outcomes in emerging adulthood: A test of mediated pathways

Childhood adversity is a complex issue with the potential for lasting effects over the developmental trajectory. Research has confirmed that people who experience significant adversity, hardship and trauma in early stages of development are at an increased risk of a range of negative outcomes at later stages of the life-course, including increased psychological distress and dysfunction, decreased likelihood of educational engagement and an increased risk of early parenthood. However, distal events exert their influence on later outcomes through various proximal mechanisms. One such postulated mechanism is a sense of belonging. This study investigated the role of sense of belonging as a mediator between experiences of adversity in childhood and psychosocial outcomes in emerging adulthood, amongst a sample of 254 young people receiving a range of social services throughout Australia. Results of three mediation analyses confirm that the path from childhood adversity to psychological distress and educational engagement is only weakly mediated by sense of belonging. No other statistically significant relationships were found. These results indicate that additional mediators are likely needed to more fully explain the effects of childhood adversity on psychosocial functioning in emerging adulthood. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of belonging for practice in the field of child and youth welfare.     

Profession and Workplace Expectations of Social Workers: Implications for Social Worker Subjective Well-Being

The expectations people have of social workers, and those that social workers hold of themselves, can negatively affect social worker's perceived well-being, via work stress and strain and other negative workplace experiences. This qualitative research presents findings that help to better understand what aspects of these expectations have the greatest impact on the well-being of a sample (n = 19) of social workers with reported low levels of workplace and profession satisfaction. Our data support a conceptual framework of social worker's expectations that relate to outcomes of practice, social worker roles, the perceived functioning by other health-related professionals, conflict in direct practice with social worker identity and having to work in adverse situations, as all contributing to the well-being of social workers. Findings are discussed in relation to social work practice and the role and function of professional associations and educational programmes in addressing these issues that emerge in practice.     

Who Is Supporting Homeless Youth? Predictors of Support in Personal Networks

Homeless youth lack the traditional support networks of their housed peers, which increases their risk for poor health outcomes. Using a multilevel dyadic analytic approach, this study identified characteristics of social contacts, relationships, and social networks associated with the provision of tangible and emotional support to homeless youth (N = 419, M age = 20.09, SD = 2.80). Support providers were likely to be family members, sex partners, or non–street‐based contacts. The provision of support was also associated with contacts' employment and homelessness status, frequency of contact, shared risk behaviors, and the number of network members that were homeless and employed. The results provide insights into how homeless youth could be assisted to develop more supportive social networks.     

From dependence to interdependence: towards better outcomes for young people leaving state care

Young people leaving out of home care are arguably one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. Compared to most young people, they face particular difficulties in accessing educational, employment, housing and other developmental and transitional opportunities. Care leavers have been found to experience significant health, social and educational deficits including homelessness, involvement in juvenile crime and prostitution, mental and physical health problems, poor educational and employment outcomes, inadequate social support systems and early parenthood. These poor outcomes reflect a number of factors including ongoing emotional trauma resulting from experiences of abuse and neglect prior to care, inadequate support while in care, accelerated transitions to adulthood and lack of guaranteed ongoing financial and other assistance to help facilitate this transition. Young people leaving care do not currently receive the ongoing support that a good parent would be expected to provide for their children. Using relevant literature from the USA, UK and Australia, this paper examines the factors that contribute to these poor outcomes and potential policy and practice reforms that may lead to better outcomes for care leavers. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Social Support on the Psychological Adjustment of Divorced Mothers

Social support has been frequently hypothesized as a significant moderating influence on the adverse consequences of marital disruption. This exploratory longitudinal study examined the impact of social support on the psychological adjustment of divorced mothers. Divorced mothers provided social network information and psychological adjustment profiles at two months and six months following divorce. Results indicate that there were major changes in the structural and interactional characteristics of the participants' social networks over time. Some types of social support were related to well-being and several structural and interactional characteristics of the social network were related to adjustment.     

Children in out-of-home care as young adults: A systematic review of outcomes in the Nordic countries

BackgroundInternationally, the Nordic countries occupy top positions in child well-being. We investigated literature on the overall outcomes of young adults from the most vulnerable backgrounds in the Nordic countries, namely young adults who were placed in statutory out-of-home care (OoHC, i.e. foster care) during childhood in the Nordic countries for the protection of their safety and welfare.MethodsWe followed PRISMA guidelines and conducted literature searches manually, as well as electronically, via EBSCO's Psychology/Sociology databases and ProQuest's Social and Behavioral Sciences databases in February 2016 for quantitative studies that compared outcomes at age 18 or later between young adults placed in OoHC as children and those never placed in OoHC. Because of the heterogeneity and small number of eligible studies on each outcome, we conducted no meta-analysis but did formulate a narrative synthesis.ResultsOf 333 studies identified, 20 met the inclusion criteria. All of these studies were cohort studies that employed social and health register data. OoHC placement was studied with nine outcome categories: self-supporting problems, educational challenges, mental health problems, criminality, teenage parenthood, mortality, suicidal behavior, alcohol and drug use, and disability pension. In each of these categories, young adults with a history in OoHC faced higher risks compared with the general population, even after adjusting for various birth parents' socio-economic, demographic, and mental health–related factors.ConclusionAlthough the Nordic countries are among the world's leading nations in promoting child well-being, the Nordic welfare model has partly failed in preventing the inequality of families with children. As young adults, children placed in OoHC in the Nordic countries face an elevated risk of experiencing adversity.     

Race,Gender, and Social Support: A Study of Networks in a Financial Services Organization

A wealth of research indicates that social support improves employees' well-being and job performance. What is not well understood is how employees' race and gender influence the receipt of this type of support. I analyze qualitative and quantitative data to understand how race and gender influence the social support that workers receive. The results suggest that neither structural nor relational factors explain why blacks receive social support from fewer network members than whites. There is some evidence that relational factors contribute to gender differences in the receipt of social support, however. Interviews with workers suggest that gender schemata, the sex-typing of networks, reactions to racial discrimination, and differences in the value placed on social support contribute to race and gender differences in social support.     

Caring for Persons with Serious Mental Illness

Abstract

This article places evidenced-based knowledge of practice within the social context of care and proposes five policy objectives and specific policy and program changes to address care needs of people with serious mental illness. In spite of demonstration programs that provide the basis for proposed policy initiatives throughout the United States, treatment provision for this population remains inadequate and their safety and well-being continues to be at risk. The authors suggest that treatment initiatives need to be tied to stable policies protecting the mentally ill from adverse social context changes. The authors conclude that policies are needed that will enhance housing assistance, independent social functioning, personal empowerment, and treatment engagement. In addition, efforts are needed to make better use of inpatient hospital care, to better understand the role of assisted treatment, and to better develop consistent long-term fiscal support for the seriously mentally ill. They offer specific policy recommendations for changes in HUD programs, Medicaid and Medicare funding, and treatment programming that address these needs.     

Potentials of care: The uncertain politics of social and emotional ability and difference in American childhood

This article examines middle class children's and parents' complex engagements with contemporary practices of cultivation, care and surveillance focused on children's social and emotional capacities and differences. Emblematic of a sociality and emotion-focused biopolitics of childhood, such care provokes moments of spontaneous connection and self-expression for children even as they engage dynamics of disciplining control and normalisation, an outcome that may work against and towards the objectives of care. Moreover, parental investments in social–emotional care reveal adults' conflicted implication in dynamics of child normalisation, and the potential of this form of caretaking to generate politically valuable empathic insight.