Reconnecting Homeless Adolescents and Their Families: Correlates of Participation in a Family Intervention
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Reconnecting Homeless Adolescents and Their Families: Correlates of Participation in a Family Intervention Norweeta G. Milburn 1 & Alexandra M. Klomhaus 1 & W. Scott Comulada 1 & Susana A. Lopez 1 & Eraka Bath 1 & Bita Amani 2 & Jessica Jackson 1 & Alex Lee 3 & Eric Rice 3 & Alan Semaan 1 & Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim 3
# Society for Prevention Research 2020
Abstract Behavioral family interventions are an effective way to intervene to prevent negative developmental outcomes for adolescents. Participation in family interventions encompasses behavioral and cognitive/attitudinal dimensions, among others, indicated by retention and engagement, respectively. Two dimensions of participation, retention and engagement, in a family intervention were examined in a sample of newly homeless adolescents and their parents or guardians. Correlates of participation included parents with more income and less perceived family conflict and adolescents with higher endorsement of depression, anxiety, somatization, obsessive-compulsive, phobic, and psychotic symptoms on the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Stronger therapeutic alliance was correlated with being more distressed (i.e., lower income, more hostility), being a female adolescent participant, and having greater comfort discussing sex with parents. Furthermore, parents and adolescents with greater distress and thus greater need were more apt to finish the intervention. The finding that families who were experiencing more distress had higher alliance scores suggests that there is an additional need for development of interventions for families in crisis. Both participant and provider perceptions are also important in development of a strong therapeutic alliance. This study’s findings have implications for further exploration of the development of cultural humility and improving mental health literacy among facilitators of behavioral interventions. Keywords Homeless adolescents . Youth high-risk behaviors . Family conflict . Family interventions . Intervention engagement
There is a large unmet need for family interventions for homeless adolescents. Family interventions with homeless adolescents are, however, a relatively unexplored area (Pergamit et al. 2016) even though their family relationships are often characterized by conflict, inappropriate problem-solving and poor communication (Tyler and Schmitz 2013). While Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01157-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Norweeta G. Milburn [email protected] 1
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles, 760 Westwood Plaza, Room A8-159, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA
2
Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA, USA
3
University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Los Angeles, CA, USA
research demonstrates that newly homeless adolescents will return home (Milburn et al. 2007), those who have more
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