Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Awol As A Crisis Response In Out-Of-Home Placement Settings, Stephen James Oby Jr

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Youth elopement from out-of-home placement settings, an act colloquially referred to as AWOL, is a frequent and extremely risky outcome for youth and a key concern for child welfare entities. AWOL is hypothesized here as a maladaptive coping response to the experience of out-of-home placement as a crisis-inducing event. Conceiving of AWOL as a response to a crisis state redefines apparent risk factors as crisis origins and enables an understanding of which youth may experience a removal and out-of-home placement event as crisis inducing. Factors related to AWOL outcomes are embedded within an ecological systems framework and the interactions between …