Adolescent Youth and Society Runaways

Adolescent

Youth and Society

Runaways that utilize short-term shelter services are more likely to have a better outcome than those youth who do not seek out services. Evaluating the outcomes of youth using shelter services provides an opportunity to document intervention effectiveness, as well as guide future service development. Research in this area has shown that youth utilizing crisis shelter services had strong positive outcomes six weeks after discharge. This study adds to the current knowledge by testing hypotheses around short -- and longer-term effectiveness, as well as exploring the role of post-discharge service use. The results confirm the hypotheses that runaway shelters are effective across a wide range of outcomes, but that over time many of these outcomes ease. This study also finds that there is a need for post-discharge coordination of care, particularly around substance use and family issues

Introduction

Research on runaway and homeless youth has traditionally focused on the causes, backgrounds, and individual characteristics that are associated with running away. A considerable amount of research has recognized the uneven risk for problems faced by these youth. High-risk problem behaviors include: substance use and abuse, HIV / AIDS risk behaviors, depressive symptoms and suicide. While these studies have provided a view of the challenges experienced by runaway/homeless youth, there has been limited research that has addressed service provision and outcomes of service use among this high-risk youth population (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).

Summary

In a study done by Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, (2006), the long-term outcomes of runaway/homeless adolescents who utilize emergency shelter services were examined. Evaluating outcomes of youth using shelter services provides an opportunity to document intervention effectiveness, as well as guide future service development. Outcomes targeted by interventions to runaway/homeless youth have been looked at in terms of school status, employment, self-esteem, behavioral problems, mental health/substance use, and family relationships. There have been very few studies undertaken that have reviewed the results of runaway/homeless youth in seeking assistance from youth crisis shelters. Methodical evaluations of outcomes for the youth using services would provide much needed documentation of intervention effectiveness and point to new directions for service development. A systematic sound evaluation of these services represents a critical next step for service provision and policy decisions in regard to this under-served population (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).

This was a longitudinal study conducted using runaway/homeless youth using emergency shelter and crisis services. Data was gathered from eleven agencies that provide services to these youth in Federal Region VII, which included Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. The participant agencies were part of the MINK Network of Runaway and Youth Services, a group of programs providing emergency shelter and crisis services for youth. All agencies were federally funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. The eleven agencies that participated in the study provided services across an assortment of settings including urban, suburban, and rural locations. Some were freestanding shelters and others were part of larger service networks. Agency populations showed considerable variation in both make up and size. Some agencies served only males or only females, while others served both. All agencies provided similar emergency shelter and crisis services, including short-term basic shelter, crisis support, and counseling. Agencies were funded from a variety of sources, but received a majority of their funding from governmental supports and the United Way. The study sample consisted of all youth discharged from each runaway/homeless youth emergency shelter for a 6-month period (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).

The most significant finding of this study showed that shelter-using youths returning home to live with their parents experienced greater positive outcomes than youths who were released to other locations. Findings from this study also demonstrated that youth utilizing crisis shelter services had strong positive outcomes six weeks after discharge. This was equivalent to those youth utilizing ongoing, long-term services (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).

Critique

There are several significant limitations that must be considered when looking at the results of this study. First, there was lack of a control group which limits the conclusions that can be drawn concerning causal assertions about the effectiveness of services. It is thought that future research on service use for this population needs to include a comparison condition of other troubled youth, perhaps runaway/homeless youth not seeking crisis services. Features of the sampling strategy limited the generalization of the findings. Since the sample included only service-using youth, it is not generalizable to the entire runaway/homeless population. The authors believed that the youth in this sample were representative of the population of service-using runaway/homeless youth from Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, and Kansas. However, other research has suggested that this population is not representative of other geographic areas across the U.S. In terms of demographics and other factors. This provides support for the need to examine service-seeking populations in other regions of around the country (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).

In addition, the outcomes were only measured for 6 months after intervention. Although this extends the length of other longitudinal studies currently in the literature, whether further reduction occurs or outcomes maintain can not be determined by this study. It is also thought that there was a possibility that agency personnel interviewing their own program participants may have introduced bias into the study. The researchers felt that the trade-off of re-locating individuals and tracking a representative sample without an abundant budget made this bias unavoidable. A further challenge that was found when using agency personnel as interviewers was that the outcome interviews had to be relatively short. This resulted in an instrument that measured outcomes and service but was limited in complexity. The limited number of significant differences that were discovered relative to the large numbers of analyses made it impossible to rule out the possibility that a few significant findings attained were merely pieces of the number of analyses (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, Reid and Spitznagel, 2006).