Predicting Homelessness Among Emerging Adults Aging Out of Foster Care Essay

Introduction

The adults that age out of the foster care are more likely to become homeless a year after leaving the foster care than those who have not been to foster care. There is a close relationship between foster care services and the rate at which people become homeless. The child welfare association is responsible for most of the programs that help people to get shelter or to reduce homelessness. During the transition from foster care to adulthood, there are many skills that the young adults should be equipped with and these should be all-inclusive to ensure they reduce the economic challenges that are mostly behind the homelessness. The article focused on these facts and used stepwise regression process that ended up with 15 predictive factors. The article analyzed the youths who have become parents of late and who was in foster care between 2010 and 2012. The article looked at a total of 1,202 youths and used the data collected from them to analyze the factors that lead to homelessness and how they can be avoided. After a 12-month follow-up, the article compiled a full analysis of the challenges of homelessness among the young adults in the Washington State. The article found out that youths who had disrupted adoptions or had multiple foster placements and those who had been involved in juvenile legal cases had high chances of becoming homeless.

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Critical Analysis

The research done on this article was comprehensive and it covered the critical parts of the matter under investigation. There are many factors that could be considered in this area and the authors concentrated on the key ones that could lead to the homelessness among the adults -who age out of the foster care. The paper is well-written and uses a language that one can easily understand. The authors used a few technical words and this makes it possible for people to understand the contents even without any prior training and knowledge on the matter. For example, the authors analyzed the situation of the people who have been involved in juvenile cases in their early years and the ones who had multiple placements or lived with a relative during their foster care (Shah et al., 2017). The article has both strengths and weaknesses; the first strength is that it uses simple language choices that can be applied in many instances. It also uses reliable data from verifiable sources and this increases its quality and applicability in the field. The other one is that the sample size chosen was a manageable size and the other one is that the data were analyzed in a way that the audience can understand. The last strength is that the article used a combination of many methods to present and analyze the data. For example, the use of tables to present the data makes the article easy to rely on and it increases the validity of the information therein. According to Leung (2015), the validity and reliability of research are based on the way the data is collected and presented. The authors of the article used a combination of different pieces of information and this made the article's quality to be high.

The first weakness of the paper is that it did not include a clear demarcation process for the inclusion and exclusion process. According to Bryman (2016), social research methods should use clear inclusion and exclusion criteria that can be used to get similar results of the research is repeated by other people. The article also failed to use a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Such a combination increases the quality of the article and makes it easy to get results that can be applied in practical situations (Schutt, 2014). Qualitative methods help to analyze the theoretical part of the research while the quantitative methods help to determine the statistical features in the research. The other weakness is that the authors did not give a clear solution to the challenges that lead to homelessness among the adults that age out of foster care. A good article should offer many alternatives that can be used to solve the challenges that are highlighted in it. The other weakness is that the graphical presentations were not given in an explicit way that can be understood by a person who does not have any prior training on research methods.

The research the authors did was valid and was directed to the right group because they focused on the people who have been in the foster care in the past few years. The conditions that affect people in the Washington State could be different from other states because of the socio and economic factors but the results are generally the same in the United States. For that reason, the research is a reliable source of guidance that can be applied in the entire United States and beyond. The research is also connected to other research outcomes because it is about homelessness and this topic has attracted many researchers in the past decade. The guide to the quantitative research given by Nardi (2018) was followed and this makes the research connected to the other research articles that are related to this topic. There was also a possible bias because the researchers concentrated on young adults and mostly African Americans. The researchers should have included other races in the research and a combination of these races could have revealed more details about homelessness than the ones the article has. The material used in the article were logically consistent and it is possible to understand the views of the authors and how they coordinated the research outcomes. The materials are also substantive and this makes it easy to follow the ideas of the authors from the beginning to the end of the article.

Implications

The data in the articles is relevant in many ways to my career because it gives direct insights that show the reasons why young adults are more likely to become homeless after the foster care time is over. The other relevance is that the article shows many ways in which the homeless people could get assisted. The information is relevant to my career because it can guide the relevant programs that should be applied to assist homeless people. People who are in this field, for example, the people who work in the government departments that deal with homelessness can use the data I this article to understand the current situation in the Washington State and to predict the possible situations in future. The authors analyzed data from two years and this is a reliable range that can be used to make valid decisions and to plan on the way resources should be distributed to reduce the number of homeless people in the United States.

In my opinion, the research done in this article could be improved through a change of the size of the sample, a change in data collection methods and the data analysis strategies used. There are many causes of homelessness and the government requires adequate information to curb it. The authors should also focus on the impacts of the changes on foster care and the presence of a relative in the foster care programs. As seen in the article, the authors found a reliable relationship between the presence of a relative in the foster care and the rate of homelessness. In most of the areas where homeless people live, there are many social, economic and political factors that affect their survival. In my opinion, the authors should have included these factors to analyze and determine the factors that are behind the homelessness. It is also important to determine the connection between the transfers from one foster care to another and the rate of homelessness. In some of the cases where people are transferred from one foster care to the next one, it is likely that people get distracted and affected in their ability to sustain their lives.

The data in the article can be adopted by the thinkers and decision makers to improve the way services are delivered in areas where the homeless people live. For example, the services given to the homeless can be distributed using a pattern that follows the data in this article. The article can also be adopted because the article is of high quality and based on evidence collected from the field. The authors also offered reliable evidence about the state of homelessness and this can be used to educate the society on the ways to avoid becoming homeless in the future. It can also be used to educate the foster care managers on the best ways to manage their care. The changing of foster care affects the development of the youths and it could have an impact in their future. According to Silverman (2016), qualitative research requires a comprehensive collection of data and this makes this article reliable for use in the related field. My opinion is that this article can be relied upon in making decisions related to the foster care programs.

The other view is that the article can be used to influence future decisions in the state and other states. Washington is one of the major states and it has a large population. The economic challenges in the state are similar to many other states and this could be a contributing factor to the high chances of people becoming homeless after the foster care. In the article, the authors have offered many solutions that can be applied to helping needy people. The article fits in the bigger picture and can be used to guide the government. However, as stated above, there is a need to make it more inclusive of the other races that live in the United States. The article was done intelligently and this makes it possible to follow the ideas from its beginning to its end. The statistical figures like the sample size can be made easier to understand if they are presented in tables.

References

Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Leung, L. (2015). Validity, reliability, and generalizability in qualitative research. Journal of family medicine and primary care, 4(3), 324.

Nardi, P. M. (2018). Doing survey research: A guide to quantitative methods. Routledge.

Schutt, R. K. (2014). Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research (7th Ed.). Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage.

Shah, M. F., Liu, Q., Mark Eddy, J., Barkan, S., Marshall, D., Mancuso, D., ... & Huber, A. (2017). Predicting homelessness among emerging adults aging out of foster care. American Journal of Community Psychology, 60(1-2), 33-43.

Silverman, D. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research. Sage.