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A Growth Curve Analysis of Housing Quality among Transition-Aged Foster Youth

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Abstract

Background

Procuring safe housing is a salient developmental task during emerging adulthood, one that is especially challenging for emancipated foster youth. Yet, little is known about factors that influence foster youths’ housing experiences.

Objective

This investigation documented changes in foster youth’s housing quality during the first 24 months following their emancipation. Analyses also evaluated associations between changes in housing quality and youth’s sociodemographic characteristics, childhood maltreatment experiences, and out-of-home placement history.

Method

Recently emancipated foster youth (N = 172; 66 % female; M age = 19.63 years, 84.3 % non-White) who were participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of Adapting to Aging Out provided sociodemographic information, a history of their childhood maltreatment and out-of-home placement experiences, and a month-by-month summary of their housing since emancipation.

Results

Parenting youth and youth with a high school degree had higher housing quality 6 months post-emancipation. Females and youth who emancipated at older ages showed a linear increase in housing quality at 6 months post-emancipation. Childhood exposure to domestic violence, older age of entry into foster care, and placement with a relative just prior to emancipation were associated with declining housing quality over time.

Conclusions

These findings highlight the need to provide safe and stable housing opportunities for transition-aged foster youth, and elucidate risk and protective factors to guide applied efforts to support particularly vulnerable foster youth, including those who are male, have lower education attainment, have a history of childhood domestic violence exposure, entered foster care at older ages, and/or resided with a relative at the time of their emancipation.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Dr. Chandra Reynolds who provided generous instruction and consultation throughout the execution of the analyses reported herein. We extend our deepest appreciation to the emancipated foster youth in this study for their generosity and courage in sharing their stories with us.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Fanita A. Tyrell & Tuppett M. Yates

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  1. Fanita A. Tyrell
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Correspondence to Fanita A. Tyrell.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest and both authors take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Ethics Statement

This research project was supported by a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship awarded to the first author. The study was funded by grants from the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation awarded to the second author. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the participating university. Informed consent was obtained from all participants in this study.

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Tyrell, F.A., Yates, T.M. A Growth Curve Analysis of Housing Quality among Transition-Aged Foster Youth. Child Youth Care Forum 46, 91–117 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-016-9370-1

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