The Homeless Families Research Briefs: Combatting Homelessness with Data
Highlights
- HHS wanted Abt’s help to connect homeless families to benefits.
- Abt produced 10 research briefs addressing homelessness and families.
- The Research Briefs project dove deeper into previous Abt research.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plays a key role in connecting homeless families to benefits, employment and other services needed to help them find housing and work toward self-sufficiency. The Homeless Families Research Briefs project, led by Abt Global for HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, produced a series of 10 research briefs examining children and families affected by homelessness.
The project leveraged data already collected by Abt for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Family Options Study. The Family Options Study collected information from 2,282 families who had spent at least seven days in emergency shelters in 12 communities nationwide. Abt further analyzed several data sources from the study for the research briefs, including baseline data collected by interview at the time that families were recruited into the study, follow-up surveys of families 20 and 37 months after they entered the study and administrative data covering families’ use of homeless shelters and housing programs and their employment.
The research briefs are:
- Are Homeless Families Connected to the Social Safety Net;
- Well-Being of Young Children After Experiencing Homelessness;
- Adolescent Well-being After Experiencing Homelessness;
- Hispanic Families Experiencing Homelessness (Research Snapshot);
- Child and Partner Transitions among Families Experiencing Homelessness;
- Patterns of Benefit Receipt Among Families who Experience Homelessness;
- Behavioral Health Improvements Over Time among Adults in Families Experiencing Homelessness;
- Child Separation among Families’ Experiencing Homelessness;
- Do Family Characteristics and Experiences Predict Repeated or Persistent Homelessness of Families with Children?; and
- Employment of Families Experiencing Homelessness.
Briefs are also available on the ACF website.
Learn more about the findings and how the briefs highlighted the issues around family homelessness: #HomelessnessInAmerica.