Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMRL) List Serve
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Welcome to the archive of past Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMRL) list serve messages (11,000+). The table below contains all past CMRL messages (text only, no attachments) from Nov. 20, 1996 - April 4, 2024 and is updated every two months.
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Message ID: 10609
Date: 2019-12-08
Author:Ruth Anne White
Subject:Re: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Dear Jesse et al, This is wonderful news and I wish you the best of luck with these exciting projects! The even better news is that no further experimentation is needed. There is a 30 year body of research available. There are programs all over the US carrying out various types of housing-child welfare partnerships as has been the case since HUD, HHS, and CWLA first conceived (and Congress funded) the Family Unification Program in 1990. The most effective and long-standing program in the US is in Connecticut and the staff there (in any of the partner agencies) are always happy to discuss how best to use housing subsidies (whether that be project based which is what you imply in your email or tenant based) and services to keep families together and safe. I also work closely with them to assure that federal funding is available year to year through HUD's 30 year old Family Unification Program to compliment the considerable amount of state child welfare funding used to simply subsidize rent to prevent separation or quickly reunify families for whom housing is the primary reason for risk or for separation. The program I'm referencing is the Supportive Housing for Families Model in Connecticut. This is a thirty year old partnership between DCF, the state and local PHAs and a state-wide human services organization, The Connection, Inc. In fact, this program was included in the $25 million experiment that ACS carried out from 2012-2018 that Amy mentioned. UConn, Urban Institute, and more recently Chapin Hall at the direction of Dr. Anne Farrell in addition to local research teams in all of the sites have followed the ACS demo called "the Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing Child Welfare Families." I think Amy offered a link to that report. It is important to note that the Connection Inc has access to amply state and Section 8 permanent housing subsidies. It is the permanent nature of this that makes the difference (as indicated not just in this research but also in the federally funded RCT the Family Options Study). Thus, while they are able to do single site (project based) programming where all of the families are in one building together their model instead (based on evidence) helps families find units of their choice (using a robust landlord recruitment effort and helping the families market themselves as good renters) and then case management is provided in the home, within the community to help the families become part of their community. School, work, finding a health care provider, the public library, transportation, neighbors, friends, etc. So, in a place like NYC, this is more difficult to do and thus, concentrating the families in one building is somewhat unavoidable and can be effective and this is something that I would urge you to contact the Corporation for Supportive Housing about. Here again, this is something which they have over 20 years experience in operating and training other folks to do. The University of Minnesota School of Social Work did a wonderful compilation of best practices of housing and child welfare for families - including two articles on the Connecticut program in their free publication CW360. Here's a link: https://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CW360_Spring2017_WEB508.pdf You may also wish to reach out to the Mandel School of Social Sciences at CWRU. They were retained as the research team to follow a Cuyahoga County SIF/SIB concept where housing was provided to reunify child welfare families. But the families were placed in vacant public housing building and thus, concentrated together in a disadvantaged neighborhood. It would be good to learn from that experience as well. Finally, there is a current notice of funding availability (NOFA) out for HUD's Family Unification Program (applications are due next week). This could be a good funding source for you projects as the vouchers can be project-based. Here's a link to the NOFA. I'm sure NYCHA will apply - but you could double check. https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA.pdf If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm excited to learn more and help in any way that I can. -Ruthie Ruth White, MSSA Executive Director National Center for Housing & Child Welfare 4707 Calvert Road College Park, MD 20740 phone 301-699-0151 toll free 866-790-6766 fax 301-699-0152 rwhite@nchcw.org
www.nchcw.org
Strengthening America's families through affordable housing.
________________________________
From: bounce-124189894-12859385@list.cornell.edu on behalf of Dworsky, Amy
Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2019 3:22 PM
To: Child Maltreatment Researcher List (CMRL)
Subject: RE: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Urban Institute led the evaluation of the study of supportive housing programs for families involved with the child welfare system.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/metropolitan-housing-and-communities-policy-center/projects/supportive-housing-families-child-welfare-system
From: bounce-124189322-55641443@list.cornell.edu On Behalf Of Jesse Wilkinson
Sent: Friday, December 6, 2019 9:15 PM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Good evening,
Does anyone have thoughts or guidance about about family interventions for reducing risk for child maltreatment and/or ACS involvement in the context of a homelessness and/or mental illness?
I realize this is a big topic but am working on developing a Supportive Housing model for families.
"Reducing risk for ACS involvement" has been identified as an outcome for this project.
Background: there is a whole lot of evidence supporting the effectiveness of Supportive Housing interventions in achieving positive outcomes for individuals impacted by homelessness and/or mental illness-- that is, providing permanent affordable housing with fully-integrated intensive support services (primary care, case management, psychiatric services) in-house works really well to stabilize vulnerable folks! To my knowledge there's no prevailing guidance around best practices for Supportive Housing programs with families.
Current efforts/project status: We built some time into this grant to engage in some needs assessment work around developing effective services. We are just getting started on planning with a workgroup, and are really quite open to designing this intervention at present. For example, through speaking with program staff; domestic violence and child truancy issues have been identified as risk factors for ACS involvement that appear to be clinically important for our population. We have not systematically evaluated this yet.
Please note: we have access to three new family-specific NYC permanent supportive housing buildings, to pilot whatever intervention we settle on. It's really quite exciting and we have a rich opportunity to consider how to conduct an extremely compelling evaluation with the ultimate goal of supporting the nuanced needs of these complex families.
Thanks in advance for thoughts,
Jesse
--
Jesse L. Wilkinson, M.A.
Pronouns: she, her, hers
NY, NY
MOBILE: (231) 357-4067
Dear Jesse et al, This is wonderful news and I wish you the best of luck with these exciting projects! The even better news is that no further experimentation is needed. There is a 30 year body of research available. There are programs all over the US carrying out various types of housing-child welfare partnerships as has been the case since HUD, HHS, and CWLA first conceived (and Congress funded) the Family Unification Program in 1990. The most effective and long-standing program in the US is in Connecticut and the staff there (in any of the partner agencies) are always happy to discuss how best to use housing subsidies (whether that be project based which is what you imply in your email or tenant based) and services to keep families together and safe. I also work closely with them to assure that federal funding is available year to year through HUD's 30 year old Family Unification Program to compliment the considerable amount of state child welfare funding used to simply subsidize rent to prevent separation or quickly reunify families for whom housing is the primary reason for risk or for separation. The program I'm referencing is the Supportive Housing for Families Model in Connecticut. This is a thirty year old partnership between DCF, the state and local PHAs and a state-wide human services organization, The Connection, Inc. In fact, this program was included in the $25 million experiment that ACS carried out from 2012-2018 that Amy mentioned. UConn, Urban Institute, and more recently Chapin Hall at the direction of Dr. Anne Farrell in addition to local research teams in all of the sites have followed the ACS demo called "the Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing Child Welfare Families." I think Amy offered a link to that report. It is important to note that the Connection Inc has access to amply state and Section 8 permanent housing subsidies. It is the permanent nature of this that makes the difference (as indicated not just in this research but also in the federally funded RCT the Family Options Study). Thus, while they are able to do single site (project based) programming where all of the families are in one building together their model instead (based on evidence) helps families find units of their choice (using a robust landlord recruitment effort and helping the families market themselves as good renters) and then case management is provided in the home, within the community to help the families become part of their community. School, work, finding a health care provider, the public library, transportation, neighbors, friends, etc. So, in a place like NYC, this is more difficult to do and thus, concentrating the families in one building is somewhat unavoidable and can be effective and this is something that I would urge you to contact the Corporation for Supportive Housing about. Here again, this is something which they have over 20 years experience in operating and training other folks to do. The University of Minnesota School of Social Work did a wonderful compilation of best practices of housing and child welfare for families - including two articles on the Connecticut program in their free publication CW360. Here's a link: https://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CW360_Spring2017_WEB508.pdf You may also wish to reach out to the Mandel School of Social Sciences at CWRU. They were retained as the research team to follow a Cuyahoga County SIF/SIB concept where housing was provided to reunify child welfare families. But the families were placed in vacant public housing building and thus, concentrated together in a disadvantaged neighborhood. It would be good to learn from that experience as well. Finally, there is a current notice of funding availability (NOFA) out for HUD's Family Unification Program (applications are due next week). This could be a good funding source for you projects as the vouchers can be project-based. Here's a link to the NOFA. I'm sure NYCHA will apply - but you could double check. https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA.pdf If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm excited to learn more and help in any way that I can. -Ruthie Ruth White, MSSA Executive Director National Center for Housing & Child Welfare 4707 Calvert Road College Park, MD 20740 phone 301-699-0151 toll free 866-790-6766 fax 301-699-0152 rwhitenchcw.org
www.nchcw.org
Strengthening America's families through affordable housing.
________________________________
From: bounce-124189894-12859385list.cornell.edu on behalf of Dworsky, Amy
Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2019 3:22 PM
To: Child Maltreatment Researcher List (CMRL)
Subject: RE: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Urban Institute led the evaluation of the study of supportive housing programs for families involved with the child welfare system.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/metropolitan-housing-and-communities-policy-center/projects/supportive-housing-families-child-welfare-system
From: bounce-124189322-55641443list.cornell.edu On Behalf Of Jesse Wilkinson
Sent: Friday, December 6, 2019 9:15 PM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Good evening,
Does anyone have thoughts or guidance about about family interventions for reducing risk for child maltreatment and/or ACS involvement in the context of a homelessness and/or mental illness?
I realize this is a big topic but am working on developing a Supportive Housing model for families.
"Reducing risk for ACS involvement" has been identified as an outcome for this project.
Background: there is a whole lot of evidence supporting the effectiveness of Supportive Housing interventions in achieving positive outcomes for individuals impacted by homelessness and/or mental illness-- that is, providing permanent affordable housing with fully-integrated intensive support services (primary care, case management, psychiatric services) in-house works really well to stabilize vulnerable folks! To my knowledge there's no prevailing guidance around best practices for Supportive Housing programs with families.
Current efforts/project status: We built some time into this grant to engage in some needs assessment work around developing effective services. We are just getting started on planning with a workgroup, and are really quite open to designing this intervention at present. For example, through speaking with program staff; domestic violence and child truancy issues have been identified as risk factors for ACS involvement that appear to be clinically important for our population. We have not systematically evaluated this yet.
Please note: we have access to three new family-specific NYC permanent supportive housing buildings, to pilot whatever intervention we settle on. It's really quite exciting and we have a rich opportunity to consider how to conduct an extremely compelling evaluation with the ultimate goal of supporting the nuanced needs of these complex families.
Thanks in advance for thoughts,
Jesse
--
Jesse L. Wilkinson, M.A.
Pronouns: she, her, hers
NY, NY
MOBILE: (231) 357-4067
Author:Ruth Anne White
Subject:Re: Reducing ACS Involvement as an outcome of Family Supportive Housing Intervention (in development)
Dear Jesse et al, This is wonderful news and I wish you the best of luck with these exciting projects! The even better news is that no further experimentation is needed. There is a 30 year body of research available. There are programs all over the US carrying out various types of housing-child welfare partnerships as has been the case since HUD, HHS, and CWLA first conceived (and Congress funded) the Family Unification Program in 1990. The most effective and long-standing program in the US is in Connecticut and the staff there (in any of the partner agencies) are always happy to discuss how best to use housing subsidies (whether that be project based which is what you imply in your email or tenant based) and services to keep families together and safe. I also work closely with them to assure that federal funding is available year to year through HUD's 30 year old Family Unification Program to compliment the considerable amount of state child welfare funding used to simply subsidize rent to prevent separation or quickly reunify families for whom housing is the primary reason for risk or for separation. The program I'm referencing is the Supportive Housing for Families Model in Connecticut. This is a thirty year old partnership between DCF, the state and local PHAs and a state-wide human services organization, The Connection, Inc. In fact, this program was included in the $25 million experiment that ACS carried out from 2012-2018 that Amy mentioned. UConn, Urban Institute, and more recently Chapin Hall at the direction of Dr. Anne Farrell in addition to local research teams in all of the sites have followed the ACS demo called "the Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing Child Welfare Families." I think Amy offered a link to that report. It is important to note that the Connection Inc has access to amply state and Section 8 permanent housing subsidies. It is the permanent nature of this that makes the difference (as indicated not just in this research but also in the federally funded RCT the Family Options Study). Thus, while they are able to do single site (project based) programming where all of the families are in one building together their model instead (based on evidence) helps families find units of their choice (using a robust landlord recruitment effort and helping the families market themselves as good renters) and then case management is provided in the home, within the community to help the families become part of their community. School, work, finding a health care provider, the public library, transportation, neighbors, friends, etc. So, in a place like NYC, this is more difficult to do and thus, concentrating the families in one building is somewhat unavoidable and can be effective and this is something that I would urge you to contact the Corporation for Supportive Housing about. Here again, this is something which they have over 20 years experience in operating and training other folks to do. The University of Minnesota School of Social Work did a wonderful compilation of best practices of housing and child welfare for families - including two articles on the Connecticut program in their free publication CW360. Here's a link: https://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CW360_Spring2017_WEB508.pdf You may also wish to reach out to the Mandel School of Social Sciences at CWRU. They were retained as the research team to follow a Cuyahoga County SIF/SIB concept where housing was provided to reunify child welfare families. But the families were placed in vacant public housing building and thus, concentrated together in a disadvantaged neighborhood. It would be good to learn from that experience as well. Finally, there is a current notice of funding availability (NOFA) out for HUD's Family Unification Program (applications are due next week). This could be a good funding source for you projects as the vouchers can be project-based. Here's a link to the NOFA. I'm sure NYCHA will apply - but you could double check. https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA.pdf If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm excited to learn more and help in any way that I can. -Ruthie Ruth White, MSSA Executive Director National Center for Housing & Child Welfare 4707 Calvert Road College Park, MD 20740 phone 301-699-0151 toll free 866-790-6766 fax 301-699-0152 rwhite@nchcw.org
Dear Jesse et al, This is wonderful news and I wish you the best of luck with these exciting projects! The even better news is that no further experimentation is needed. There is a 30 year body of research available. There are programs all over the US carrying out various types of housing-child welfare partnerships as has been the case since HUD, HHS, and CWLA first conceived (and Congress funded) the Family Unification Program in 1990. The most effective and long-standing program in the US is in Connecticut and the staff there (in any of the partner agencies) are always happy to discuss how best to use housing subsidies (whether that be project based which is what you imply in your email or tenant based) and services to keep families together and safe. I also work closely with them to assure that federal funding is available year to year through HUD's 30 year old Family Unification Program to compliment the considerable amount of state child welfare funding used to simply subsidize rent to prevent separation or quickly reunify families for whom housing is the primary reason for risk or for separation. The program I'm referencing is the Supportive Housing for Families Model in Connecticut. This is a thirty year old partnership between DCF, the state and local PHAs and a state-wide human services organization, The Connection, Inc. In fact, this program was included in the $25 million experiment that ACS carried out from 2012-2018 that Amy mentioned. UConn, Urban Institute, and more recently Chapin Hall at the direction of Dr. Anne Farrell in addition to local research teams in all of the sites have followed the ACS demo called "the Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing Child Welfare Families." I think Amy offered a link to that report. It is important to note that the Connection Inc has access to amply state and Section 8 permanent housing subsidies. It is the permanent nature of this that makes the difference (as indicated not just in this research but also in the federally funded RCT the Family Options Study). Thus, while they are able to do single site (project based) programming where all of the families are in one building together their model instead (based on evidence) helps families find units of their choice (using a robust landlord recruitment effort and helping the families market themselves as good renters) and then case management is provided in the home, within the community to help the families become part of their community. School, work, finding a health care provider, the public library, transportation, neighbors, friends, etc. So, in a place like NYC, this is more difficult to do and thus, concentrating the families in one building is somewhat unavoidable and can be effective and this is something that I would urge you to contact the Corporation for Supportive Housing about. Here again, this is something which they have over 20 years experience in operating and training other folks to do. The University of Minnesota School of Social Work did a wonderful compilation of best practices of housing and child welfare for families - including two articles on the Connecticut program in their free publication CW360. Here's a link: https://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CW360_Spring2017_WEB508.pdf You may also wish to reach out to the Mandel School of Social Sciences at CWRU. They were retained as the research team to follow a Cuyahoga County SIF/SIB concept where housing was provided to reunify child welfare families. But the families were placed in vacant public housing building and thus, concentrated together in a disadvantaged neighborhood. It would be good to learn from that experience as well. Finally, there is a current notice of funding availability (NOFA) out for HUD's Family Unification Program (applications are due next week). This could be a good funding source for you projects as the vouchers can be project-based. Here's a link to the NOFA. I'm sure NYCHA will apply - but you could double check. https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA.pdf If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm excited to learn more and help in any way that I can. -Ruthie Ruth White, MSSA Executive Director National Center for Housing & Child Welfare 4707 Calvert Road College Park, MD 20740 phone 301-699-0151 toll free 866-790-6766 fax 301-699-0152 rwhitenchcw.org
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