Reaching All Families: Family,School,and Community Partnerships Amid Homelessness and High Mobility in an Urban District

Importance of Partnerships and Promising Evidence

Amid conditions of homelessness, certain parenting practices—such as encouraging children’s skills and exhibiting warmth—are particularly important for children’s development (David, Gelberg, & Suchman, 2012; Gewirtz et al., 2009; Herbers et al., 2011; Miliotis, Sesma, & Masten, 1999). Research suggests that homeless mothers strongly value their relationships with their children (David et al., 2012) and that close parent–child relationships are associated with high levels of parental involvement and good grades and behavior (Miliotis et al., 1999). Likewise, partnerships are crucial to HHM students’ success (Groton, Teasley, & Canfield, 2013; Miller, 2011b; Murphy & Tobin, 2011; Stronge & Hudson, 1999).

Not only do HHM parents have high educational aspirations for their offspring (Stronge & Hudson, 1999; Tobin & Murphy, 2013), but in one study with 27 shelter parents by Yon and Sebastien-Kadie (1994), most parents reported positive views of the school, although some felt that educators needed to connect more with parents. Similar findings were reported in a study of nine homeless parents who were either living in agency-owned apartments or participating in a case management program (Grothaus, Lorelle, Anderson, & Knight, 2011).

Challenges

However, schools often struggle to identify and reach out to HHM families (Larson & Meehan, 2011; Tobin & Murphy, 2013. Some educators lack experience with homelessness (Groton et al., 2013), and others feel that HHM parents do not value involvement (Grothaus et al., 2011). In Groton et al.’s (2013) survey of 201 school social workers, the most commonly cited barrier to working with homeless students was “parent and family issues” including concerns about parental support and participation.

HHM families also face their own obstacles; homelessness can impair a parent’s ability to nurture their children (Hausman & Hammen, 1993; Howard, Cartwright, & Barajas, 2009). The daily chore of meeting basic needs (such as for shelter or food) can also trump parents’ other concerns, such as education (Murphy & Tobin, 2011; Stronge & Hudson, 1999). Likewise, the conditions of homelessness can make it difficult to create home environments that stimulate children’s development. For instance, it can be challenging to attain and store the appropriate books or to provide children with a variety of experiences (David et al., 2012). In one study, families experiencing homelessness who were in a program that provided wraparound support services, actually scored better than disadvantaged housed families in their access to activities and conditions that promoted children’s cognitive growth—perhaps reflecting the program’s opportunities for structured play and learning (Howard et al., 2009).

Although there is a dearth of research on homelessness and parenting (Gewirtz et al., 2009), the extant literature suggests that HHM parents often feel depressed, have weak social supports, and lack positive parenting role models (Bassuk et al., 1996; Howard et al., 2009; Hausman & Hammen, 1993; Swick, 2009). HHM parents are often forced to parent in public, commonly confront negative stereotypes about their parenting, and may feel a general loss of control over their parenting (Bassuk et al., 1996; Boxill & Beaty, 1990; David et al., 2012; Hausman & Hammen, 1993; Howard et al., 2009; Lindsey, 1998; Miller, 2015; Paquette & Bassuk, 2009; Swick, 2009). Based on their past experiences and educational level, HHM parents may also feel uncomfortable at school or have little confidence in their ability to help with academic matters (Paquette & Bassuk, 2009; Swick & Bailey, 2004). Coupled with these barriers, parents are often uninformed about McKinney-Vento and the available school/community resources (Miller, 2011a; Murphy & Tobin, 2011; Stronge & Hudson, 1999).

In response, scholars have recommended a number of strategies to working with HHM families. These include providing access to parenting and content knowledge classes (Murphy & Tobin, 2011; Stronge & Hudson, 1999; Swick, 2009; Tobin & Murphy, 2013), connecting families to community resources (Grothaus et al., 2011; Groton et al., 2013; Miller, 2015; Murphy & Tobin, 2011), creating a nurturing school climate (Stronge & Hudson, 1999; Tobin & Murphy, 2013), encouraging coordinated action between schools and communities (Miller, 2009), challenging biases and stereotypes (Grothaus et al., 2011; C. M. Shields & Warke, 2010), learning about HHM families’ needs and assets (Grothaus et al., 2011; Groton et al., 2013; C. M. Shields & Warke, 2010; Swick & Bailey, 2004; Yon & Sebastien-Kadie, 1994), and developing unique responses to families’ varied circumstances (Miller, 2015; C. M. Shields & Warke, 2010).

HHM Families and Residential Contexts

At the time of identification in 2012-2013, 75% of homeless students were doubled up (living with friends or extended family out of necessity), 3% were unsheltered, 6% were staying in motels/hotels, and 16% were in shelter (NCHE, 2014). Shelters are supervised facilities that are used for temporary living accommodations and can include both short- and longer term programs (NCHE, 2013). Families who enter shelter may choose or be required to split up—with teenagers doubling up or men and older boys attending separate male facilities (Lindsey & Sanchez, 2010). ¹ As a consequence to separation, providers may not consider that some shelter residents are also parents or they may ignore the needs and assets of family members who are not physically present (Barrow & Laborde, 2008; Paquette & Bassuk, 2009).

Despite the diversity in residential context, there is little research that considers how it impacts schooling. Hallett (2012) suggests that the particular residential arrangements of doubled-up families can mold educational participation. Yet most studies concentrate on families who are in emergency shelter—which may offer short-term housing with no guaranteed bed for the next night or may provide beds for a certain period of time—or compare sheltered families with their low-income housed counterparts (e.g., Bassuk et al., 1996; Howard et al., 2009; Miliotis et al., 1999; Yon & Sebastien-Kadie, 1994). Others do not draw comparisons across residential programs (e.g., Gewirtz et al., 2009; Grothaus et al., 2011). Miller’s (2015) work is an exception—his mixed methods study examined families’ places of homelessness including doubling up, emergency shelter, and longer term shelters, and explored how these places mold school and community action.

Yet, recent policy changes are restructuring where and how families live. In February 2009, the Obama Administration provided US$1.5 billion for a homeless prevention fund called the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). Shortly afterward, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Programs were reauthorized through a bill, which matched two earlier bills known as the HEARTH Act (National Alliance to End Homelessness [NAEH], 2009). The HEARTH Act focused on homeless prevention and encouraged communities to reduce shelter stays (Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness, 2011). It also reauthorized the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), which strove to end family homelessness in a decade (USICH, 2010). Alongside the focus on prevention, HPRP, the HEARTH Act, and the USICH encouraged a different philosophy of service delivery for HHM families. Known as the housing first perspective, advocates of this approach view permanent housing as a human right and believe that people should be housed before they are offered other supports (Padgett, Gulcur, & Tsemberis, 2006). Housing first advocates suggest that people should not be required to be sober or accept treatment before being housed and supports should not be mandatory (De Jong, 2012)—which often stands in contrast to shelter procedures. ² Families in housing first are often placed in independent dwellings such as scatter-site apartments.

A few local communities who piloted housing first programs for families reported promising outcomes such as cost savings and decreased length of time in homelessness (NAEH, 2006), while data from the Beyond Shelter Program in Los Angeles suggests high rates of housing stability (USICH, n.d.). Yet there is limited empirical research on the impact of housing first for families (Pavlakis, 2014; Waegemakers Schiff & Rook, 2012). Although Pavlakis (2014) suggests that the parallel implementation of the McKinney-Vento Act and housing first may shape families’ life opportunities in several unexpected ways, little is known about what housing first may mean for partnership building.

Here, I address these research gaps, build upon the work of Yon and Sebastien-Kadie (1994) and Grothaus et al. (2011), and contribute to the literature by examining FSCPs from the perspective of HHM parents, school personnel, and community stakeholders. By exploring the diversity in HHM families, I not only complement the work of Miller (2015), C. M. Shields and Warke (2010), and Hallett (2012) but also extend this work by considering housing first. I ask the following: (a) To what extent are FSCPs fostered with HHM parents? and (b) How do the diverse residential contexts of homelessness and high mobility (such as living in shelter, doubling up, and residing in housing first) shape the opportunities and challenges for partnership building? To address these questions, I am informed by Joyce Epstein’s theory of overlapping spheres of influence and framework of six types of involvement for comprehensive programs of partnerships.

Home Context and Learning

Interviews with HHM parents revealed that they valued education and wanted their children to be involved in the school and community. As a mother in shelter told her son, “go [with] all the stuff they have at school, go ahead and take it, it’s good . . . when you get in high school that’s what counts, extracurricular.” In other cases, parents initiated involvement to encourage socialization, provide role models, and promote growth.

Some HHM parents discussed the importance of homework routines, encouraging their child to do his or her best in school, and showing that they cared about school. Nine parents discussed helping, overseeing, or enriching their children’s academic well-being at home. A shelter parent reported, “whatever they are doing at school, I try to implement at home.” Four parents emphasized regular reading routines, while for others, math skills and writing quality were practiced at home.

Other parents commented on the challenges they faced in maintaining homework routines, overseeing their children’s academic progress, and enriching their children’s education. Seven parents felt that their own education played a role in shaping the extent to which they could help their children. Some had to reach out to friends or caseworkers for homework assistance and four parents explicitly asked for more guidance from schools. Six parents felt that their children had little to no homework to do at home—Half were grateful, but others felt it made it harder to keep track of their children’s progress.

Quality of Family, School, and Community Interactions

Although at some schools, direct relationships were encouraged between HHM parents and teachers, in a couple, the school social worker was the main source of contact. As a principal explained, “we’ve streamlined it into sort of a primary contact person that those teachers kind of feed information through. It ends up being Mary, our school social worker.” A teacher noted, “I focus on the kid, the child. I let the social worker deal with, not deal with but develop their relationship with the parent because there’s a lot of trust involved in this kind of stuff.” Community stakeholders, however, were not always aware of schools’ external communication practices.

Schools were more likely to forge close relationships with families at the elementary level than during the middle or high school years. As a high school social worker explained, “kids do not want their parents involved so and we are also a school where kids are held responsible for how they are doing. They are the ones taking responsibility for that.” Likewise, a shelter caseworker reported, “the most challenging school staff for me to communicate with are generally the high school.” She felt that elementary personnel were much more responsive.

Across grades, however, nearly all school personnel commented on the challenges of interacting with parents because of outdated addresses, disconnected phones, and the general stress of homelessness. Many school personnel also felt frustrated when they arranged transportation for a parent and the parent still did not come to school. An interventionist highlighted how she unsuccessfully arranged for a mother to come to the school three or four times in hopes that the mother, if she saw how well her son did in an intervention, “would be more likely to get up and get him in a taxi.” Because she did not attend and her son had poor attendance, the school was “going to pick other students to take that place.” In this case, the inability of the mother to attend the school restricted her son’s educational opportunities.

Other school stakeholders were well aware of the multifaceted obstacles. A school guidance counselor highlighted that “there are just so many barriers” for families such as child care and work schedules, and that the schools did not always have the resources, staff, or flexibility to go to parents. She declared, “there are certainly things that we could do as a school I think to make things better.” Twelve school social workers discussed “meeting families where they are at”—reflecting a commitment to working with parents despite their instability—and many school stakeholders prioritized checking in and relationship building. If a first-grade teacher could not reach an HHM parent, he would “walk the kids home, wherever they’re staying.” Similarly, a kindergarten teacher used different outreach methods based on students’ home contexts, “if they don’t have a telephone I might send frequent notes home or a lot of times our families who are homeless are living with other family members so we’re able to reach them through other family members.” Likewise, in Table 1, a school social worker described the outcomes of a brainstorming meeting that led to positive schooling experiences. Yet even within a school, there were variations in how individual stakeholders communicated with families—some social workers and teachers visited homes while others “might not even have contact” with an HHM family.

According to school stakeholders, the financial resources available at each school to transport parents to the building varied greatly posing structural barriers to traditional definitions to involvement. Five school-based interviewees highlighted how many PTOs isolated HHM families because they held inaccessible school events (such as silent auctions) and followed social norms that were unfamiliar and uninviting to many parents. However, these barriers were not always formidable; at one school, a new PTO president worked to shift the PTO culture, which drew a more representative sample of parents to the school.

Experiences by Residential Context

In some ways, families’ experiences were shaped by their residential context. Nineteen parents, for instance, discussed how their residential context posed unique challenges to their parenting routines or their ability to establish home environments that supported their children as learners. Likewise, families received varying degrees of attention from schools based on where they were living.

Family-Like Schools

In family-like schools, the relationships between students and teachers are paramount, and there is a focus on personal attention and recognition of students’ individual progress (Epstein, 2011). In many cases, Midtown schools employed best practices that were aligned with family-like schools, such as focusing on unique needs (Grothaus et al., 2011; C. M. Shields & Warke, 2010; Yon & Sebastien-Kadie, 1994) and collaborating effectively with the community (Grothaus et al., 2011; Groton et al., 2013; Miller, 2015).

Yet, community collaboration was often limited, deficit-based communication sometimes dominated, and there was scarce evidence of effective partnerships with HHM parents at the high school level. Miller (2015) emphasized the necessity of developing unique responses based on families’ context and Graue and Oen (2009) highlight the importance of focusing on the needs and resources of households in specific communities. I mirror this focus and suggest that schools can learn more about HHM families and students’ residential contexts and then tailor responses appropriately.

However, I highlight how sometimes school personnel are “differentiating”—but only in the sense that they are more aware of and attuned to the needs of students in shelter than to students who are doubled up or in housing first. The perception that doubled up families are stable and better positioned to be involved was not substantiated by the parent interviews. Most HHM parents described conflicts with host families about parenting and the division of labor and reported little to no educational advantages to doubling up—a finding mirrored by Miller (2015) and Pavlakis (2014). Because parents reported on doubling up retrospectively, my findings may disproportionately capture its challenges. However, doubling up is often a precursor to shelter entry and is commonly time limited (Hallett, 2012). Given this, I suggest that many doubled up families may require more support than schools perceive. Likewise, with the federal emphasis on housing first over traditional shelter, it is increasingly important that schools understand and address the ways in which housing first may shape FSCPs.

I also suggest some limitations to “family-like schools.” Some school actors responded to students’ diverse contexts by denying HHM students comparable learning opportunities with their peers (such as by not assigning them homework or removing them from a successful intervention)—yet research suggests the importance of maintaining high expectations (Murphy & Tobin, 2011). Likewise, HHM parents sometimes used homework as an important vehicle to parental involvement. Not sending homework home at all—rather than redesigning it—effectively eliminated this partnership opportunity, hindering the development of “school-like families.”

School-Like Families

According to Epstein (2011), school-like families are well informed about how to help their children with school, establish and maintain stimulating learning environments, and tend to involve children in active learning. I found that some HHM families emphasized the importance of their reading and homework routines while a couple of parents even created their own academic tasks. Given parents’ limited economic resources and high stress levels, it was interesting that many parents emphasized the importance of extracurricular activities. This focus may reflect poor families’ “efforts toward keeping children safe” (Lareau, 2011, p. 66) or the fact that families are in the system and perhaps encouraged by caseworkers to enroll their children in programming.

However, for many families, their residential context hindered their ability to be a “school-like family.” Aligned with the findings of Miller (2015), families doubled up and in shelter had trouble finding quiet places to do homework although shelter did create some learning opportunities. Extending Miller’s (2015) work, I found that housing first families could more easily maintain homework routines, but sometimes felt isolated from the broader community and did not have access to on-site services (see also, Pavlakis, 2014).

Supporting the literature on parenting in public spaces (e.g., Boxill & Beaty, 1990; David et al., 2012; Lindsey, 1998), many HHM parents felt powerless. Some parents believed that their own education hindered their ability to oversee homework and that they needed more scaffolding from schools—a theme similarly reflected in the broader parental involvement literature (e.g., Epstein, 2011; Lareau, 1987). In many instances, these challenges limited “school-like family” practices.

Theoretical Implications

Although Epstein’s theory and framework was helpful for this study, my findings suggest a couple of theoretical considerations. Referring to the external structure of the overlapping spheres of influence model (Figure 1), and reflecting Barton et al.’s (2004) focus on the broader context, I suggest that in the context of HHM families, not only are Force A, Force B, Force C, and Force D important, but an additional Force E—representing the family’s residential context—may also be needed (Figure 3). Residential context did not impact all aspects of parental involvement in Midtown and sometimes its influence varied based on the children’s age (Force A), yet in many ways it played a role in shaping needs and assets and molding the extent to which FSCPs were fostered. Future research in other urban communities should consider the value of Force E.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

External structure adapted for HHM families.

Another consideration concerns Figure 2, which illustrates the internal structure of the model. As previously discussed, the Parent (P) and Teacher (T) interactions are about an individual child. However, in the context of HHM families, I suggest that although interactions about a child may be between a teacher and a parent, they are often (and sometimes solely) between a school social worker and a parent or a school social worker, parent, and caseworker. Interviews revealed that school social workers play crucial roles in working with HHM families—a finding mirrored in research (Groton et al., 2013; Jozefowicz-Simbeni & Israel, 2006; Markward & Biros, 2001). As such, the model could be extended to consider the pivotal position of social workers.

Recommendations for Practice and Policy

According to Milner (2013), both “outside-and inside-of-school” factors that influence student outcomes are relevant to family and parent involvement (p. 23). Scholarship that considers the intersection of these wide-ranging factors can help propel research on poverty and education forward (Milner, 2013). Although this study helps address this need, and is based on rich data, it draws from one community, so additional research is needed to discern transferability. Despite this limitation—and reflecting the broader literature on strengths-based parental involvement and urban schools (Boutte & Johnson, 2014; Graue & Oen, 2009)—I suggest that schools need to create spaces to learn from HHM families. By creating these spaces, schools may also foster trust and share power with families—which are important themes in the broader partnership literature (S. L. Shields et al., 2013; Warren, 2005). Developing asset-based strategies, such as sharing students’ successes, may be crucial.

Executing Epstein’s (2011) redefinitions may require urban schools and communities to understand the diverse residential contexts. Epstein (2011) suggests that parents should be able to volunteer in places other than the school building; families in shelter, for instance, could be provided with opportunities to volunteer at on-site shelter-based education programs. Likewise, workshops, which should sometimes be held in alternative spaces such as community centers or parent’s homes (Carreon et al., 2005), could be hosted in a housing first living room. School actors who are connecting families to resources should be cognizant of needs and assets based on residential context—considering not only shelter families but also those doubled up or in housing first. Schools should also consider relationship building with important figures in student’s lives—even if the student is not living with them—and collaborating not only with shelter providers but also with housing first caseworkers, community social workers, and others who know the neighborhoods and individual families well.

McKinney-Vento requires schools to collaborate with school and community stakeholders and communicate with families experiencing homelessness, yet the act is severely underfunded (Miller, 2011a; Tobin & Murphy, 2013). Advocating for increased funding could strengthen the act’s power in fostering high-quality interactions between families, schools, and communities. Likewise, schools and districts should ensure that their local parent involvement programs do not operate in isolation from McKinney-Vento-related activities. In the face of rising student homelessness, it is more important than ever that urban schools use all the tools at their disposal to forge asset-based partnerships with HHM families and the broader community.