A Peruse Through Academic Journals on the Link Between Foster Care and Homelessness

As this century began, journalist Fred Barnes quoted four discouraging words found in some illustrious newspapers: “First of a series.” Journalist Mickey Kaus defined the typical newspaper series as a “bloated journalistic project driven by egos and internal institutional needs.” But one thing is even more discouraging than most newspaper series: a series of articles from academic journals.

Nevertheless, here are some journal articles about the relationship between homelessness and foster care. One, by Heather Taussig in 2002 in Child Abuse and Neglect, had the scintillating title, “Risk behaviors in maltreated youth placed in foster care: A longitudinal study of protective and vulnerability factors.” Taussig noted that “for many maltreated children, the experience of trauma does not cease when they are placed in out-of-home care; victims are at an increased risk of experiencing additional negative events throughout their lives.”

Her summary:

In addition to suffering the consequences of child maltreatment, children placed in foster care are likely to experience additional trauma by being removed and often isolated from their homes, schools, friends and family. Furthermore, these stressors may be exacerbated by frequent placement changes, not uncommon for older foster children. Given their already increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems, youth in foster care may lack appropriate coping resources to handle the multiplicity of stressors associated with multiple life transitions.

A forage through the following year, 2003, yielded an article by Susan Kools and Christine Kennedy in Pediatric Nurse. They reported how studies from 1980 and 1982 showed “a 30%-40% prevalence rate of psychopathology in children in foster care. In the past decade or so, these estimations have risen to 48%-80%, in contrast to the community prevalence rate of 10%.” Common difficulties include aggression, attention problems, and delinquent or disruptive behavior: “Problems with attachment and developing trusting interpersonal relationships are quite common.” Those are the same problems managers of homeless shelters face in their clients.

Kools and Kennedy also found:

Most children in foster care have multiple placements that make it logistically difficult for the young person to maintain friendships. . . . Moving from home to home often results in changing school settings. . . . Premature launching into independent living generally occurs before the adolescent is developmentally ready. . . . Many foster care “graduates” face serious problems such as homelessness, incarceration, victimization, and early pregnancy and parenting.

The authors included a list of foster care improvements needed, including care coordinators and advocates. They concluded:

If all of these activities sound like they are above and beyond the call of duty in primary care, you may ask yourself, “If not me, then who?” Who is responsible for ensuring that children in foster care — some of the most vulnerable children we can imagine — receive the health care and related services they need to grow and thrive?

Three years later, Joanne O’Sullivan and Maria McMahon in Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice (2006) titled their article with the question that ended the Kools and Kennedy article: “Who Will Care For Me?” The rest of the title brought up a matter that long seemed settled: “The Debate of Orphanages Versus Foster Care.” The authors asked whether a return to orphanage care is feasible, and then stipulated that they were not turning back the clock: “recent efforts are not aimed at recreating the mistakes of the historical orphanage but would create new forms of institutionalization.”

Four years after that, Kimberly Tyler and Lisa Melander used a sample of 172 young adults who were homeless, or had a history of running away and being homeless, in “Foster Care Placement, Poor Parenting, and Negative Outcomes Among Homeless Young Adults” (Journal of Family and Child Studies, 2010). They found that, “Young adults who reported ever experiencing sexual abuse were significantly more likely to have lived in foster care compared to those without a history of maltreatment.”

Tyler and Melander “examined whether the two groups of homeless young adults (i.e., those with and without foster care placement) differed in terms of family histories (e.g., sexual and physical abuse).” Not only did they find more sexual abuse among those with foster care experience, but “the two groups of young adults significantly differed in the number of times they ran away. . . . Youth with foster care histories tend to run away multiple times.”