Engaging the Homeless Poor

Engaging the Homeless Poor with Severe Mental Illness:
A Feasibility Study of Shelter Seekers in a Suburban County

Investigators: Kim Hopper, Ph.D., Gary Haugland, M.A., Terri Hay, B.A., John Jost, M.S.

PROJECT GOALS
The goals of this project are to:

test the feasibility of tracking homeless individuals with severe mental illness in Westchester County using several tracking methods;
develop and test the usefulness of instruments for assessing the residential status of these individuals, their contacts with formal and informal sources of help, and reasons for their engagement with (or disengagement from) the mental health system;
map and assess their service system network;
prepare a proposal for a study that more fully explores functions of contemporary shelters.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS
Activities have included enrollment of subjects in an "ethnographic" tracking group and in two comparison (call-back and other sources) groups; renewal of informed consent for individuals at each follow-up interview; initial analyses of both fieldwork accounts and formal trajectories of engagements; completion of service system mapping for persons with mental illness who are homeless; and in-house presentation of preliminary findings and identification of issues for further research. Manuscripts intended for publication include: an overview of the Westchester County homeless service system and its single-individual clients; an analysis of the reasons for homelessness vs. functions of shelter; a comparison of three approaches to track shelter users; an analysis of the exits from, vs. course of, homelessness; and an analysis of the costs of the current system. During this period, two publications have appeared and three more are in preparation.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS/POLICY IMPLICATIONS
The most immediate policy implications are local in nature: the identification of service gaps in the Westchester County homeless service system and, as important, the specification of reasons for (or working misunderstandings about) those gaps. Of particular interest is a provisional group of (high-use) service recipients for whom there appears to be no suitable supported housing available locally, and whose patterns of service utilization in social service, mental health, and criminal justice systems arguably reflect instability of residence and the absence of institutional follow-through more than treatment-resistant disorders. In addition, a cluster of distinct "utilities" associated with shelter use has been identified, functions not adequately captured by the conventional understanding of shelter as "emergency lodging".

Findings from this project have yielded comparative costs and benefits of three different tracking systems for use in a longitudinal study of homeless persons who have severe mental illness. They will also alert county administrators to the relative effectiveness of shelter out-placement activities for different groups of shelter users.

PUBLICATIONS

Haugland, G., Siegel, C., Hopper, K., et al: Mental illness among single homeless adults in a suburban county. Psychiatric Services 48: 504-509, 1997.

Hopper, K., Jost, J., Hay, T., Welber, S., and Haugland, G.: Homelessness, severe mental illness and the institutional circuit. Psychiatric Services 48: 659-665, 1997.

Shinn, M., Weitzman, B., and Hopper, K.: Homelessness, in Encyclopedia of Mental Health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998..

Project completed.

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Engaging the Homeless Poor with Severe Mental Illness: A Feasibility Study of Shelter Seekers in a Suburban County

Engaging the Homeless Poor with Severe Mental Illness:
A Feasibility Study of Shelter Seekers in a Suburban County