Permanent Housing for Child Welfare‐Involved Families: Impact on Child Maltreatment Overview

Abstract

A longitudinal randomized controlled trial tested whether access to permanent housing reduces child maltreatment among inadequately housed families under investigation for child abuse and neglect. The study followed homeless and child welfare-involved families randomly assigned to receive a referral for housing subsidies plus housing case management (n = 75, 196 children) or housing case management alone (n = 75, 186 children). Latent growth models examined change in caregiver-reported frequencies of psychological aggression, physical abuse, and neglect toward children at five time points across 2.5 years. Intent-to-treat analyses suggested treatment differences for minor assault and neglect that approached significance; families randomly assigned to permanent housing plus case management exhibited marginally greater declines compared to families referred for housing case management only. Caregiver psychological aggression remained high over time, regardless of treatment condition. No evidence indicated higher risk families benefitted more from permanent housing. Results show some promise of permanent housing and highlight the complex needs of homeless families under investigation for child maltreatment. Findings emphasize the importance of continued involvement from the child welfare system to connect families with important resources.

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

“…Child welfare savings accumulated to less than $500 per family per year, not including the cost of the voucher plus other services. Moreover, rates of parent-reported child maltreatment remained high with no differences between treatment conditions (Fowler & Schoeny, in press). Findings suggest permanent housing alone does not alleviate risk for homeless families and the necessity of continued child welfare involvement.…”

“…A growing body of research demonstrates the strain of housing insecurity on child development and family functioning (Coley, Leventhal, Lynch, & Kull, 2013; Fowler & Schoeny, in press; Fowler et al, 2015). Disruptions associated with homelessness have meaningful implications for life-course development and unknown social impact and costs.…”

Pathways to Housing Policy: Translating Research to Policy to Achieve Impact on Well Being

“…We then examined the emerging body of evidence on supportive housing as we developed a funding initiative designed to examine housing as a platform for child welfare interventions. KFT, Connecticut's supportive housing program (see below), Fowler and colleagues’ analysis of the effects of the Family Unification Program (Fowler & Chavira, ; Fowler & Schoeny, ), and Culhane, Park and Metraux () analysis of the cost of homeless spells among families all contributed to the impetus for ACF's Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing (SH) for Families in the Child Welfare System . This program ultimately funded five national housing and child welfare demonstrations (U.S. DHHS, ), some of which are represented in this special issue (see Farrell, Dibble, Randall & Britner, ; Fowler & Schoeny, ).…”

“…This crisis in affordable housing results in 75% of ELI renter households in 2014 spending more than half of their income on rent and utilities. As discussed by several authors in this issue (Fowler & Schoeny, ; Pergamit, Cunningham & Hanson, ; Shinn, Grown & Gubits, ), targeting housing vouchers to families with the highest need is important; the reality, however, is that current funding for housing vouchers is insufficient to meet the need. The number of families with children who receive federal housing subsidies has fallen by 13% since 2004, marking 2016 as its lowest point in more than a decade (Mazzara, Sard & Rice, ).…”

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

“…The role of safe, stable housing circumstances as a determining factor in child health and well being is well established in theory and research (Bronfenbrenner, ; Fowler et al., ; Leventhal & Newman, ). Families experiencing unsustainable rent burden, residential mobility, inadequate and unsafe housing, and literal homelessness struggle to meet the physical and emotional needs of children and adolescents; yet, relatively little evidence guides scalable approaches to prevent and mitigate instability and promote healthy child development (Fowler and Schoeny, in press). This recognition led to our Call for Papers for a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology ( AJCP ) focused on housing and well being.…”