[WITHDRAWN] Sustained Outcomes of a Housing Intervention for Child Welfare System-Involved Families

Background and Purpose. Homeless families are more likely to come to the attention of the child welfare system than families that are stably housed (Dworsky, 2014), and lack of stable housing makes reunification more difficult for homeless families with children in foster care (Courtney et al 2004; Bai et al 2023). Supportive housing can increase the likelihood that homeless families with children in foster care will reunify and reduce the time to reunification (Pergamit, Cunningham, Hanson & Stancyzk, 2019; Rog, Henderson, & Greer, 2015). However, little is known about the long-term impact of supportive housing on the outcomes of child welfare system-involved families. This study examined the extent to which the child welfare outcomes of Families Moving Forward (FMF), a federally funded supportive housing program for child welfare system involved families in San Francisco, were sustained up to five years after program exit.

Method. Families were eligible for FMF if they were experiencing homelessness and were receiving family reunification or family preservation services. A total of 261 children in 154 families were randomized over the course of four years (from 2013 through-2016) – (133 treatment group children in 79 families and 128 control group children in 75 families). A longitudinal database using administrative data was developed to follow preservation and reunification outcomes for at least five years post-randomization, addressing the primary research questions on the prevention of out-of-home placement and likelihood of reentry. A logistic regression model was used that controlled for child age, gender, and race. All analyses were conducted at the child level with standard error adjustments for the clustering of children within families.

Results. No significant differences were found between the treatment and control groups for the preservation or reentry outcomes five years post intervention. Descriptively, approximately one third of children with a preservation case at randomization experienced an out-of-home placement and one quarter of children who reunified re-entered care from both groups.

Conclusion and Discussion. The supportive housing intervention had some early impact on the timing reunification (Haight, Lery, Rhodes et al 2018), but outcomes were not sustained longer term. This suggests that families may have recurring needs, which brought them to the attention of the child welfare system when they received the intervention. Homeless families tend to have co-occurring issues (e.g. mental health and substance use) that exacerbate their housing instability and contribute to their child welfare case (Font & Warren 2013). A onetime supportive housing intervention may help them stabilize, but these underlying issues remain. Families retain their housing voucher as long as they remain eligible, but they no longer have access to the supportive services provided by FMF. San Francisco continues to invest in housing programs for child welfare involved families and recently launched a new rapid re-housing model informed by evaluation results from FMF.