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The Link Between Childhood Abuse Experiences and Homeless People’s Quality of Life: A Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

Studies report a relatively high prevalence of childhood abuse experiences (CAE) among adult homeless people. Within homeless populations, people with CAE appear to be worse off than homeless people without such experiences. This study compares a broad set of factors influencing the quality of the daily lives of Dutch homeless people with and without CAE. It also examines the extent to which CAE are predictive of the rate of change in these factors 2.5 years after entering the social relief system. Data were used from an observational longitudinal multi-site cohort study following Dutch homeless people 2.5 years after entering the social relief system. The 4 constitutional conditions of the Social Quality Approach (living conditions, interpersonal embeddedness, societal embeddedness and self-regulation) were used to cluster the factors included in this study. Participants were interviewed twice, at baseline (N = 513) and at follow up (N = 378), using a quantitative questionnaire. At baseline and follow-up participants with CAE were more disadvantaged in each of the 4 conditions of social quality, except for societal embeddedness at follow-up. After 2.5 years, on average, all participants improved more or less at a similar rate on almost all factors, with a few exceptions: Significant differential changes over time were found regarding employment status, quality of relationships with family members and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Findings corroborate the broad, detrimental and persistent impact of CAE on the quality of daily lives of homeless people and the need for homelessness services to apply trauma-informed care.

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Data, Materials and/or Code Availability

The dataset analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. This dataset will also be deposited in the public repository of the Radboud University Medical Center upon acceptance of this paper.

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Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Impuls - Netherlands Center for Social Care Research, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud university medical center, Postbus 9101, Geert Grooteplein Noord 21 (route 120), 6500 HB, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Sandra H. H. Schel, Linda van den Dries, Sara al Shamma & Judith R. L. M. Wolf

  2. Buurtteam Organisatie Sociaal Utrecht [Community social work Utrecht], Utrecht, the Netherlands

    Jorien Van der Laan

  3. Humanitas Foundation, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

    Barbara Van Straaten

  4. Tranzo Scientific Centre for Care and Wellbeing, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Dike van de Mheen

Authors
  1. Sandra H. H. Schel
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  2. Linda van den Dries
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  3. Jorien Van der Laan
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  4. Barbara Van Straaten
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  5. Dike van de Mheen
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  6. Sara al Shamma
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  7. Judith R. L. M. Wolf
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Jorien Van der Laan, Barbara Van Straaten, Dike van de Mheen and Judith Wolf. Data analysis were performed by Sandra Schel and Sara al Shamma. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Sandra Schel and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sandra H. H. Schel.

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Ethics Approval

This study was exempt from formal review by an accredited Medical Review Ethics Committee region Arnhem-Nijmegen (file number 2010 − 321).

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The authors have complied with the APA ethical principles in the treatment of the research participants, and all participants gave written informed consent.

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The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

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Schel, S.H.H., van den Dries, L., Van der Laan, J. et al. The Link Between Childhood Abuse Experiences and Homeless People’s Quality of Life: A Longitudinal Study. Journ Child Adol Trauma (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-023-00582-6

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