Exploring the Association Between Housing Insecurity and Child Welfare Involvement: A Systematic Review
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LITERATURE REVIEW PAPERS
Exploring the Association Between Housing Insecurity and Child Welfare Involvement: A Systematic Review Rong Bai1 · Cyleste Collins2 · Robert Fischer1 · Victor Groza1 · Liuhong Yang1 Accepted: 3 November 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Housing insecurity and involvement with the child welfare system are common experiences for low-income families. To date, previous empirical studies on family housing insecurity have focused on the most severe form of housing insecurity (i.e., entering the emergency shelter) and its association with foster care placement of the children. However, we know relatively little about the relationships between other forms of housing insecurity and types of child welfare involvement. This study, a systematic review, examines various forms of housing problems and their relationship to different types of child welfare involvement. Five electronic databases were searched and a total of 12 studies were included in the review. Overall, research findings indicated mixed findings. Most studies suggested that housing insecurity was associated with child maltreatment investigation, foster care placement and prolonged time before achieving case closure, while some studies found no relationship between housing insecurity and child maltreatment substantiation. The findings have implications for practice and research for families who experience housing insecurity and child welfare involvement. Keywords Housing instability · Homelessness · Child welfare involvement Insecure or unstable housing among families involved in the child welfare system is one reason children enter foster care and a major barrier for successful reunification (Culhane, Webb, Grim, & Metraux, 2003; Font & Warren, 2013; Fowler et al., 2013). Given growing evidence of the connection between housing insecurity and child welfare involvement, a better understanding of the scale and the nature of the relationship between the two is needed (Dworsky, 2014). The purpose of this research was to conduct a systematic review of the relationship between housing insecurity and child welfare involvement that summarizes the existing literature and helps further our understanding of these connections.
* Rong Bai [email protected] 1
Case Western Reserve University, 11235 Bellflower Rd, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, USA
2
Housing Insecurity and Child Welfare Involvement According to the Annual Homeless Assessment Reports to Congress (AHAR) from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on a single night in January 2019, there were about 53,692 families with children (1,71,670 people) experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness, representing one-third of the total homeless population (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2020; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, 2020). This number, however, underestimates the prevalence of housing insecurity across the U.S. (Brush, Gultekin, & Grim, 2016).
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