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

描述(由申请人提供)：这项研究旨在评估儿童福利系统调查的住房不足家庭住房干预的有效性，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--家庭团聚计划(FUP)--是一项住房和城市发展(HUD)倡议，向住房不足的家庭提供住房选择代金券(第8节)，这些家庭的住房存在外出安置的风险。这项研究建议利用一项自然实验的优势，随机向家庭(n=100)提供FUP服务，并将这些家庭与儿童福利服务照常提供的对照组(n=100)进行比较。在这两种情况下都会发生过抽样，以说明凭证吸收失败和损耗。这项研究将在住房服务之前获得两次基线评估，然后在基线后6个月、12个月和24个月重新评估，共五个时间点。照顾者和他们的孩子将接受小组调查。这项研究将检验几个假设：1)假设接受住房服务的家庭将报告更大的家庭稳定性--如居住稳定性、住房质量、日常生活、噪音和困惑、照顾者心理健康、照顾者分离和学校变化--与通常的儿童福利服务相比；2)假设住房干预将对儿童的身心健康、学业成绩和发展适应行为产生显著的积极影响，相对于通常的服务；3)我们假设与住房服务相关的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，来自凝聚力较差和更暴力的社区的家庭将从干预中获益较少；5)我们假设，住房干预将对基线上最不稳定的家庭产生最大影响；6)理论上，住房干预将对年幼的儿童产生更大的积极影响。严谨的设计使人们能够对FUP如何运作以及干预是否在多个层面的背景下进行类似的操作进行强有力的科学调查。该项目旨在提高对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有力的基础。

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.