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Factors related to post-shelter placement
Abstract
Thousands of children each year receive services at federally funded shelters for runaway and homeless youth. Youth at these shelters report a variety of significant personal and family problems, including aggression, depression and prior histories of suicide and/or abuse. Although family reunification is a major goal of many of these shelters, very little is known about the factors that are related to youths' reunification following their departures. The primary purpose of this study was to identify youth and family variables associated with family reunification following departure from a short-term crisis shelter. A secondary goal was to examine the correlates of family satisfaction within a group of youth who were reunified with their families. With regard to the prediction of family reunification following departure from the shelter, no support was found for the hypotheses that youth behavioral adjustment; the degree of youth separation-individuation from their parents; the quality of the parent-child attachment relationship; maternal problem-solving skill; the level of family conflict; or the interaction of child behavioral adjustment and maternal problem solving were significantly related to reunification status at departure. The level of maternal family satisfaction one week following the youths' return home was found to be significantly related to the level of conflict in the family. Greater family satisfaction was related to less family conflict. No support was found for the hypotheses relating youth behavioral adjustment, the quality of the attachment relationship, the degree of separation-individuation from the parents, or the interaction of youth adjustment and family conflict to post-shelter maternal family satisfaction. These findings suggest that service providers must focus on issues within the entire family, and not concentrate solely on the youth, when considering family reunification following a stay in a crisis shelter.
Subject Area
Social psychology|Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology|Welfare|Social work
Recommended Citation
Teare, John F, "Factors related to post-shelter placement" (1995). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9538656.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9538656