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Promoting Child Behavioral Health In Homeless Services: A Community-Based System Dynamics Approach, Katherine Marcal

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Families with children comprise one-third of the entire homeless population (Henry, Watt, Rosenthal, & Shivji, 2017). Homelessness exposes children to chaotic, unsafe living environments that pose threats to healthy development; unsurprisingly, children in homeless services display high rates of mental health disorders compared to stably housed children (Bassuk et al., 2015; Buckner, 2008). Despite concerted efforts at the state and local levels to end family homelessness by 2020, rates have remained largely unchanged over the past decade (Henry et al., 2017; U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, 2015). Additional indicators such as increasing wait times, average length of stay, and reentry …