Cycles of Risk
People who grew up in precarious home environments are more likely to raise children in similar contexts, although that’s not necessarily their intention. The risk factors associated with homelessness are especially dangerous in this way; they get passed down generationally. Studies have found a strong relationship between the amount of childhood maltreatment and family dysfunction that homeless parents experienced and the amount that their children were experiencing. Poverty has also been also associated with child maltreatment, indicating that young people are growing up exposed to the same risks their homeless parents did.
For example, women who were abused as children are more likely to become targets for violence as adults through no fault of their own. If they have children with abusive partners, then their children are at risk for poverty, abuse, residential instability, foster care placement, and many other predictors of future homelessness, creating a cycle of risk that’s extremely difficult to break out of.
The Toiletries Delivery is enabling a couple of our HACA members to build, test, and develop a toiletries delivery service that fills the gaps they see in the existing homelessness system. This process is helping us understand how we can proactively enable people experiencing homelessness to help themselves by developing opportunities for them to help their community.
The Toiletries Delivery is enabling a couple of our HACA members to build, test, and develop a toiletries delivery service that fills the gaps they see in the existing homelessness system. This process is helping us understand how we can proactively enable people experiencing homelessness to help themselves by developing opportunities for them to help their community.
Recommendations
Successful services empower the humans at their center, accommodating for their strengths and their needs. Each of these recommendations suggests a way to tailor services to fit people's realities.
STRENGTHS-BASED
ASSESSMENT
Strengths-Based Assessments can help the system adopt and standardize client-centered practices which will increase self-sufficiency by leveraging client's strengths. At entry into the homelessness system, clients will go through an intake assessment that gauges their strengths and supports them in pursuing personal and professional goals. Clients are the drivers of the goals they work on. Case managers provide the appropriate extrinsic rewards and incentives for working toward goals.
SERVICE
ALIGNMENT
City contracts do not currently have a standardized process for capturing and sharing data related to service provision. Working together, the Sunlight Foundation, the i-Team, and CTM discovered that the lack of a transparent contracting process hinders coordinated efforts to address homelessness within the city. Existing performance measures do not capture the full spectrum of activities that are made possible for city funding: case management, basic needs, medical and mental health treatment, and even shelter. The city needs to adopt a process that better illustrates all of the services that they are funding, and how those services fit into the larger homelessness system.