Fresh Start for Families with Teens

Did You Know That…?

• Family homelessness is on the rise. On any given night, thousands of New York City's most vulnerable families sleep in shelters. Approximately half include a pre-teen or teenaged child. And often families remain in those shelters for up to 8 months or more.
• Rates of teen pregnancy, chronic health problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and convictions for delinquent acts are significantly higher for this group of youth than for youths in the middle class and above.
• Homeless children have been found to suffer a wide range of adjustment and mental health problems and at least one study showed that homeless children experienced higher rates of emotional and behavioral disorders and lower communication ability scores than a comparison group of housed, poor children.
• Parents attempting to return to the workforce while finding housing and meeting welfare requirements often find it difficult to provide adequate levels of supervision and “connection time” with their vulnerable teens.

Program Description
Fresh Start, a shelter-based program to support homeless families moving from welfare to work, began in 1998 as a collaboration with HELP USA, one of the nation’s largest providers of shelter and services to the homeless. The Center implemented an innovative program at HELP, initially working with families with primarily younger (pre-teenaged) children. Over two years, 103 families participated in the research and support program. In order to engage families effectively, the Center created and utilized the Collaborative Family Program Development Model (CFPD). In this model, families are approached as experts on their situation, and are intensively interviewed about their challenges, coping approaches, and about what they desire in a program to meet their needs. Treated in this respectful, inclusive fashion, families were more likely to participate in the program than when programs are designed without their involvement.

After the first two years of the program, the shelters’ Resident Council, a focus group of teenagers, and staff of the shelter all suggested that a version of Fresh Start be created for families with teens.

The program uses multiple family discussion groups (MFDGs), a format that allows families to support and inform one another about ways of coping with the challenges of shelter life and moving from welfare to work. The groups break the wall of alienation families typically feel in shelters, eliminating their sense that they are totally unique in their struggles, and allow families to form supportive “micro-communities” that often last well beyond the end of the group.

Fresh Start is offered in various lengths, including 9-week, 4-week, and 1-day versions. All versions:

• provide separate group time for parents and for teens as well as time for all families to come together;
• combine group discussion, arts activities, and games as modes of expression and interaction;
• provide opportunities for mutual support and sharing of coping strategies;
• evaluation of the effectiveness of the 6-week program as compared to non-family oriented groups for parents and teens.

Recent CTWF Research Findings
Our first effectiveness study found that participation in Fresh Start significantly decreased parents’ sense of demoralization and kids’ behavioral difficulties. Parents in Fresh Start were also three times more likely to obtain employment or engage in job-related training than were parents that had not participated in the program. In addition, interviews with families have revealed much about the experience of family homelessness, showing that:

• teens experience shame, stigma, and isolation living in shelter
• teens often take long routes home from school and lie about where they live to avoid peers learning that they live in a shelter
• teens often feel overwhelmed with greater responsibilities such as taking care of younger siblings and helping parents with social service contacts
• one unfortunate coping approach? “Don’t make too many friends because they may leave.”
• parents are often overwhelmed with balancing need to supervise teens and younger children while seeking employment and housing