Session: Advancing the Science and Capacity for Preventing Family Homelessness in School Settings through Collaboration (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

In direct alignment with the 2025 SSWR conference theme of "Strengthening Social Impact through Collaborative Research," this symposium will highlight insights emerging from research being conducted by a research-practice partnership in Boston to advance family homelessness prevention science and capacity. Homelessness is an urgent concern in the United States, with an estimated 416,907 people in families using shelters over the course of a year. Children who experience homelessness face an array of adverse educational outcomes. There is mounting interest in leveraging school-based housing interventions as a scalable policy solution to family homelessness. Moreover, it is increasingly recognized that change requires collaboration between academic researchers, community practitioners, and school administrators.

In 2019, Boston College School of Social Work joined with FamilyAid, Boston Public Schools, and United Way of Massachusetts Bay to evaluate the Early Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (EHIP) program that seeks to identify families at risk of homelessness and proactively prevent them from experiencing homelessness. Using longitudinal surveys of program participants and administrative data analysis, we aimed to assess program impacts on housing stability as well as parent and child well-being. Over time, in line with practice realities, our research evolved to include surveys of BPS and FamilyAid staff, qualitative interviews with clients, and modeling of services from the perspective of housing providers using community-based system dynamics techniques (CBSD). We also used CBSD methods to understand factors driving our research-practice partnership. We are using findings to shape future research, advocate for continued funding, and build political support.

Included papers:

This symposium will provide an overview of our joint research program and will feature four papers. The first paper, "Dynamics of a family homelessness prevention research-practice partnership during its early stages," uses CBSD techniques to examine factors that initially drove our collaboration. The second paper, "The relationship between housing status and parent and child well-being: Evidence from a research-practice partnership," draws on surveys of EHIP program participants to understand the relationship between housing status and parent and child well-being. The third paper, "Housing outcomes among housing unstable families served by a novel school district-housing agency partnership," leverages FamilyAid administrative data to investigate whether family characteristics and service-related factors were associated with families' securing permanent housing. The final paper, "Identification of students at risk of homelessness: Evidence from Boston," reports on survey data from school-based staff on strategies they use, and challenges they face, in identifying students experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.

Combined, the presentations will convey (1) the promise and policy-relevance of school-based family homelessness prevention programming (2) the value of using multiple methods to document program implementation experiences and impacts in response to shifting practice circumstances; and (3) the benefits of open communication between partners at all stages of the research process for conducting long-term practice-relevant science..