Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Few family interventions to prevent homelessness or reunite or reconnect youth with their families have undergone rigorous evaluation. We found only six interventions we could classify as evidence-based or evidence-informed. These six interventions have several common components including being delivered in home-based settings and offering clinical services and parent training. Most were delivered by graduate-level therapists in frequent sessions lasting three to six months. In addition to these six interventions we identified ten promising interventions which have undergone evaluations with some level of rigor and 16 interventions we label emerging, as they have been evaluated but with less rigorous methods. Finally, we identify 16 interventions we label of interest, as they have been used with homeless youth but have not been evaluated.

The presentation will also discuss key implementation lessons and challenges to implementing family intervention models, as revealed in literature and in perspectives from the field. We will also discuss gaps in the evidence. For example, although data suggest that LGBTQ youth are disproportionately represented among homeless youth populations, we identified only a few evaluations of interventions targeted to LGBTQ youth and their families. We found few studies of interventions targeted to Latino or Native American/Alaskan Native families. We did not identify many evaluations of school-based interventions. Also, although child welfare systems have many evaluated strategies for working with families in conflict, we saw no evidence that those interventions are translated to homeless youth populations. We also noted that few interventions track housing or homelessness as an outcome making it difficult to assess effectiveness. Based on the findings from this research, the presentation will conclude with a discussion of future research needs and challenges.