Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

The substantial health and safety risks for individuals, their families and the community, together with lengthy, challenging and limited treatment options makes compulsive hoarding a difficult problem for agencies to address. These factors also make compulsive hoarding an important area for research to develop a coordinated and effective agency and community response. Public policies in most communities are punitive rather than intervention focused. The recent formation of several task forces across the country to correct this problem provides a promising avenue to address hoarding on a community and personal level, but the limited research literature on compulsive hoarding does not address task force roles in setting policies for public cases of compulsive hoarding. To assess task force effects on local community policy, four core research questions were considered: (a) Are community/agency hoarding task forces a viable (maximizing fiscal, personnel and administrative resources) and effective response mechanism for assisting individuals with compulsive hoarding? (b) What factors facilitate or inhibit individual agencies' or organizations' active participation in task forces? (c) What formal or informal policies facilitated by task forces can be duplicated across communities to provide services to individuals who hoard? and (d) How has participation in the task force influenced member organizations' own practice or policy responses to individuals with hoarding problems?

This project evaluates the effectiveness of multidisciplinary community task forces using four interrelated research components: (a) a semi-structured key informant interview survey of members of three American and one Canadian task forces, (b) participant observation of task force meetings at each of the four task force sites, (c) small group interviews with attendees of the observed task for meeting, and (d) archival data collection. Reflecting the complexity of compulsive hoarding which spans personal, private, and public domains, the study captured the perspectives of public and private service providers (mental health, housing, social services, public health agencies, private family service agencies) and community enforcement organizations (police, fire, legal systems, animal control) through a comparative case study analysis. Findings include the viability of task forces within certain communities, the commonalities and differences in task force formation and operations, the impact of task force participation on individual agencies and their ability to work with cases of compulsive hoarding and the generation of specific policy recommendations to address local and state responsiveness for this challenging issue.

This project yields new information about how communities are responding to public cases of compulsive hoarding by developing interdisciplinary task forces. It provides a framework for understanding how communities can establish and maintain public policy responses that address the myriad of practice challenges of compulsive hoarding cases. This foundational study will inform future research and policy development and implementation.