Housing and Child Welfare: Emerging Evidence and Implications for Scaling up Services

Abstract

Inadequate housing threatens family stability in communities across the United States. This study reviews emerging evidence on housing interventions in the context of scale-up for the child welfare system. In child welfare, scale-up refers to the extent to which fully implemented interventions sustainably alleviate family separations associated with housing instability. It incorporates multiple aspects beyond traditional measures of effectiveness including costs, potential reach, local capacities for implementation, and fit within broader social services. The framework further encompasses everyday circumstances faced by service providers, program administrators, and policymakers who allocate resources under conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. The review of current housing interventions reveals a number of systemic constraints for scale-up in child welfare. Reliance on rental assistance programs limits capacity to address demand, while current practices that target the most vulnerable families may inadvertently diminish effectiveness of the intervention and increase overall demand. Alternative approaches that focus on homelessness prevention and early intervention must be tested in conjunction with community initiatives to increase accessibility of affordable housing. By examining system performance over time, the scalability framework provides an opportunity for more efficient coordination of housing services within and outside of the child welfare system.

Scaling Up Housing Services Within the Child Welfare System: Policy Insights From Simulation Modeling

“…HUD (2014) reports on FUP. The model assumed a continuous rate of 10% turnover of vouchers in any given month, and that it took 6 months for new families to move in with vouchers after allocation (Cunningham et al, 2015; Fowler & Schoeny, 2017). One third of available vouchers were allocated to inadequately housed families working toward reunification, while two thirds aimed to keep children in home as observed in early evaluation of FUP in 31 communities (Rog et al, 1998).…”

“…Savings represented avoided expenditures from in-home child welfare services (US$200 per child per month) and foster placements (US$1,000 per child per month); estimates were based on actuarial records collected from a large Midwestern state (Fowler et al, 2018). It was assumed 2.9 children were served by each voucher provided to a family (Fowler et al, 2013; Fowler & Schoeny, 2017).…”

“…Preference for resource-intensive, voucher-based interventions fails to consider the challenges of scaling up housing services that systematically protect children. Scale-up refers to the extent to which fully implemented interventions sustainably alleviate family separations associated with housing instability (Fowler et al, 2017). Beyond program effectiveness, it considers program costs, potential reach, local capacities for implementation, and fit within broader social services.…”

Housing and Child Well Being: Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice

“…Taken together with the extant literature, the collection of papers shows mixed outcomes. Housing interventions reduce family homelessness that is related with reductions in family separations (Fowler, Farrell, Marcal, Chung & Hovmand, ; Pergamit et al., ; Rog et al., ; Shinn et al., ) and provide some benefit for child well being (Newman & Holupka, ; Gubits et al., ). Yet, risk for child maltreatment and child welfare involvement remains (Gubits et al., ; Fowler & Schoeny, ; Pergamit et al., ; Rog et al., ).…”

First eight years: a case study of starting a social system design lab

“…Over the course of this time, our research portfolio and service contracts have been remained focused on the use of system dynamics in communities and human service organizations with ongoing projects and collaborations around the world including Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Panama, Singapore, United Kingdom, and the United States. Topics typically focus on various areas of service design and community engagement in social work, public health, and preventing medicine including mental health (Trani et al, 2016), “long-tails” in health disparities (Kreuter et al, 2014), access to primary care (Rose et al, 2013), housing and homelessness (Fowler et al, 2017), cancer disparities (Williams et al, 2016; Williams et al, 2018), clinical guidelines (Markham, Hovmand, and Doctor, 2017), obesity (Colditz et al, 2016; Hoehner et al, 2015; Sabounchi et al, 2014), energy security among the poor (Chalise et al, 2018; Yadama, 2013), implementation science (Proctor et al, 2011), and gender based violence (Hovmand et al, 2012).…”