Session: Coordinating Child Welfare and Housing Services to Promote Family Stability: Evidence for Prevention Systems (Society for Prevention Research 22nd Annual Meeting)

This innovative paper symposium convenes researchers with a leading national child welfare policymaker to discuss emerging evidence from coordinated child welfare and housing services across the U.S.

Inadequate housing and homelessness present a pervasive challenge to the child welfare system. Nationally representative prevalence estimates indicate one in six families who receive in home child welfare services experience homelessness, while 30-50% of caregivers working toward reunification with children already placed in out-of-home care experience inadequate housing (Courtney, et al., 2004; Fowler et al., 2013). Children and adolescents exposed to homelessness and family instability experience elevated risk for mental and physical health problems, as well academic deficits (Cowal et al., 2002; Fowler et al., in press; Park et al., 2004).

Child welfare services, on average, fail to stabilize families, and little coordination exists between child welfare, public housing, and homelessness services (Courtney et al., 2004; Fowler et al., 2011). To promote family stability and mitigate its effects on child well-being, federal child welfare and public housing systems have increased efforts recently to encourage local coordination of services to prevent homelessness and family separation. Empirical evidence of the implementation and impact of ongoing efforts to coordinate service systems has begun to emerge.

Chaired by the former commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this symposium presents data from three initiatives that evaluate integrated housing and child welfare services in the State of Connecticut; San Diego, CA; and Chicago, IL. Connecticut data will be presented on the statewide implementation of a multicomponent evidence-based model of supportive housing for child welfare-involved families. Findings emphasize challenges associated with systematic coordination across various stakeholders in different geographic locations. The San Diego quasi-experimental study uses child welfare administrative data to test the short-term impact of providing inadequately housed and child welfare-involved families with Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers. The study incorporates instrument variable analysis to account for local variations in voucher uptake in estimating program effects. A longitudinal randomized controlled trial in Chicago, IL collects data from repeated surveys of caregivers and children to examine changes in family processes associated with referral for Section 8 Vouchers versus child welfare services-as-usual.

Implications for building evidence-based approaches to coordinated housing and child welfare services will be discussed, as well as issues involved with empirically supported dissemination of these programs and policies.