Former Foster Youth Typology of Risk: A Latent Class Analysis of Risk Factors Prior to Homelessness

Background: Homeless youth suffer from a wide range of risk factors that impact the length and quality of their lives. As many as 40% of all homeless youth report a history of foster care and emerging research suggests some experiences while in foster care may impact behavioral health outcomes. Given the rates of foster youth who become homeless, and risk behaviors associated with both a foster care experience and homelessness, this paper will seek to understand how a variety of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can be used to generate a typology of homeless former foster youth and subsequently how this typology based upon ACE’s is related to substance use and sexual risk taking during homelessness. Such a typology may be useful in identifying early intervention strategies for subset of homeless former foster youth and foster youth at risk of becoming homeless.

Methods: The YouthNet data set was used for this analysis, utilizing a convenience sample of 1046 homeless youth (age 13-25) from three drop in centers in Hollywood, Venice, and Santa Monica CA, collected as part of a longitudinal study of social networks at those locations. A latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted in SAS to determine a profile of risks among these homeless former foster youth, using ACE variables to construct these classes

Results: The latent class analysis revealed a four-class solution. Results of the LCA indicated that risk factors common to these youth belonged to a model with four risk classes including those with high homelessness risk and low trauma experience (class1), low homelessness risk and low trauma experience (class 2), low homelessness risk and high trauma experiences (class 3), and high homelessness risk and high trauma experience (class 4). Results indicated that the presence of homelessness risk more highly predicts engagement in drug and sex risk behaviors compared to you with both homelessness risk and trauma experience. In the logistic regression models, class 1 predicted the largest number of drug use, sex risk, and depressive/suicidal risk variables; those youth who had largely experienced homelessness risk variables were more like to engage in lifetime drug use with a variety of drugs, engage in sex risks, to have experienced suicidal ideation in the past 12 months and have above average CESD scores.

Discussion: This study indicates that homeless former foster youth generally fit into four distinct risk classes where their homelessness risk and trauma are concerned. While prior literature has looked at risk typologies for foster youth, this study specifically examined class membership of homeless former foster youth by their risks prior to homelessness. These findings may influence the way interventions examine risk among homeless former foster youth; youth who have experienced trauma may also have other skills or experiences that have helped reduce their incidence in drug and sex risks, and lower their levels of depressive/suicidal symptoms. Finally, these results suggest that the risk incurred by so many homeless youth, is similarly influential in the lives of homeless former foster youth, impacting behavioral health outcomes.