Housing services for child welfare families: Impact on stability and well-being.

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究旨在评估儿童福利系统调查中对住房不足家庭的住房干预的有效性，并了解该计划最有利于儿童发展的机制和条件。这项干预措施——家庭统一计划（FUP）——是住房和城市发展（HUD）的一项倡议，为那些住房不足、有可能被安置在家庭外的家庭提供住房选择券（第8条）。该研究建议利用一个自然实验，随机为家庭（n = 100）提供FUP服务，这些家庭将与儿童福利服务如常的对照组（n = 100）进行比较。在这两种情况下都会发生过采样，以解释凭证吸收失败和磨损。这项研究将在提供房屋服务前进行两次基线评估，然后在基线后6个月、12个月和24个月进行重新评估，共5个时间点。看护人及其子女将接受小组调查。该研究将测试一些假设：1)假设与常规儿童福利服务相比，接受住房服务的家庭将报告更大的家庭稳定性——如住宅稳定性、住房质量、日常生活、噪音和混乱、照顾者心理健康、照顾者分离和学校变化；2)住房干预对儿童身心健康、学业成绩和发展适应行为的影响显著高于服务干预；3)我们假设住房服务对儿童发展的积极影响将通过降低家庭稳定性来发挥作用；4)我们假设来自凝聚力较低和暴力较多的社区的家庭从干预中获益较少；5)我们假设住房干预对基线最不稳定的家庭影响最大；6)从理论上讲，住房干预对年龄较小的儿童有更大的积极影响。严格的设计使我们能够对FUP的功能进行强有力的科学研究，以及干预措施是否在多个层次的环境中发挥类似的作用。本项目旨在增进对FUP干预机制的理解，为建立循证服务模式和公共政策提供更坚实的基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a housing intervention for inadequately housed families under investigation by the child welfare system, as well as to understand the mechanisms and conditions through which the program most benefits child development. The intervention - the Family Unification Program (FUP) - is a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative that provides Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8) to families whose inadequate housing risks out-of-home placement. The study proposes to take advantage of a natural experiment that randomly provides FUP services to families (n = 100) who will be compared to a child welfare services-as-usual control group (n = 100). Oversampling will occur in both conditions to account for voucher uptake failure and attrition. The study will obtain two baseline assessments before housing services and then re-assess at 6-, 12-, and 24-months post-baseline for a total of five time points. Caregivers and their children will be administered a panel survey. The study will test a number of hypotheses: 1) it is hypothesized that families receiving housing services will report greater family stability - as indicated by residential stability, housing quality, daily routines, noise and confusion, caregiver mental health, caregiver separations, and school changes - compared to child welfare services-as-usual; 2) it is predicated that the housing intervention will have a significant positive impact on child physical and mental health, academic achievement, and developmentally adaptive behavior, relative to services-as-usual; 3) we hypothesize that positive effects on child development associated with housing services will function through reductions in family stability; 4) we hypothesize that families from less cohesive and more violent neighborhoods will gain less from the intervention; 5) we hypothesize that the housing intervention will have its greatest impact on families who are most unstable at baseline; 6) it is theorized that the housing intervention will have greater positive effects for younger children. The rigorous design enables strong scientific investigation of how FUP functions and whether intervention operates similarly across multiple levels of context. This project intends to improve understanding of the mechanisms of the FUP intervention to provide a stronger basis to build evidence-based service models and public policy.