Homelessness in Early Adulthood for Former Foster Youth: An Examination of Wave I Follow-up Data from the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD)

Purpose: Courtney, Piliavin, Grogan-Kaylor, & Nesmith (2001) and other scholars examining the phenomenon of youth aging-out of foster care have consistently identified housing instability as a problematic outcome for these youth.  Dworsky, Napolitano, and Courtney (2013), examining data from the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth, note that between 31 and 46 percent of foster youth who aged-out of care have been homeless at least once between their exit from foster care and the age of 26. Understanding the mechanisms through which aging-out foster children become homeless has important implications for policy and practice. The current study seeks to build on previous cross-sectional (e.g. White, et al., 2011) and longitudinal (e.g. Dworsky, et al.) studies examining the risk of homelessness among aging-out foster children by making use of newly available data from the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD).

Methods: The Federal regulations associated with Public Law 106-169 govern how data will be collected for NYTD. The regulations specifically mandate that states survey youth transitioning from foster care if they were in care for at least one day within 45 days of their 17th birthday. A new cohort of 17-year-old children is identified every three years and follow-up surveys are conducted with the children at the ages of 19 and 21. Survey data for the first cohort of foster children (i.e. the 2011 cohort) was collected during federal fiscal year 2011. A follow-up survey of the 2011 cohort was collected in 2013. Data are collected in six key areas: financial self-sufficiency, experience with homelessness, educational attainment, positive connections with adults, high-risk behavior, and access to health insurance. The current analysis focuses on children located for the follow-up survey (n= 7,710). Initial analyses examined risk of homelessness using multiple logistic regression analysis and multiple imputation to account for missing data.

Results: Preliminary results of our analysis are generally consistent with previous research. Among survey respondents located for the follow-up survey, approximately 20 percent had experienced homelessness within the past two years. The results of our multivariate modeling indicate that children with a history of behavioral problems (e.g. placed into care due to child behavioral problems, or adjudicated as a delinquent) are at significantly higher risk of homelessness than other children.  Economic factors (e.g. history of economic assistance or status as a parent) also appear to significantly increase a child’s risk of experiencing homelessness; findings that have not been specifically identified in previous research.

Implications: Children aging-out of foster care have a complex array of needs that are imperfectly served by social service systems in the US. With respect to homelessness, the results of our initial analyses suggest that risk of homelessness could be decreased through both behavioral and economic interventions. These results and conclusions will be discussed in the context of the need for further analyses of state-level factors (via techniques such as multilevel modeling and related approaches) and statistical approaches to handling the limitations of NYTD such as the survey’s low response rate.