COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse Practicesfrom their chaotic life in the foster care system. They typically have very limited resources from their oftenestranged families and the service system largely abandons them at age 18. So, it’s not surprising that theyshould be at such high risk for homelessness and other poor outcomes after aging out. We are now completing asecond follow-up (re-interviewing the 265 youth, over 6 years since aging out) that will give an even betterunderstanding of their long-term needs and of the intervention approaches that might divert them fromhomelessness and other poor outcome trajectories.Aging Out in PolandIn Poland, 18,887 children under age 18 live in orphanages and 48,432 children live in foster families (CSO,2005). Many of the orphanages in Poland are quite large, often housing as many as 30 to 80 children. In order tobetter understand their outcomes, we interviewed 152 such children years after leaving state care. The methodsused in our study were patterned after those used in the similar study conducted in the USA by Toro.Participants were chosen from lists of orphaned youth that left family and institutional care in the last five years inthe Opole and Wroclaw regions of southern Poland. The lists were provided by directors of the orphanages andFamily Support Centers (CPRs) in the region. About half of the participants came from orphanages and the otherhalf from foster families (unlike in the US, “formal foster care” hardly exists in Poland). The average time sinceleaving state care was 2 years (vs. 3.6 years in the US study).23% of the participants spent some time literally homeless during the two-year follow-up period (vs. 17% in theUS study). The youth from orphanages showed especially high rates of homelessness (30% vs. 17% for thosefrom family foster care). Many others complained about a lack of satisfactory and affordable housing during thisperiod. As in the US study, these Polish youth also showed high levels of psychopathology based on BriefSymptom Inventory.Intervention Ideas in Both NationsIn both the US and Poland, we are currently developing comprehensive pilot interventions. Such interventionsdraw on treatment models proven to be effective among populations with similar problems. In particular, wepropose to use methods of Intensive Case Management, including wrap-around services, originally designed formulti-need populations such as the severally mentally ill and homeless adolescents and adults (e.g., Cauce et al.,1994; Toro et al., 1997; Tsemberis, 1999). Also, the intervention model includes components of MultisystemicTherapy, originally targeted to delinquent adolescents (Henggeler, Schoenwald, & Pickrel, 1995) and, morerecently, adapted for many other groups of at-risk youth (such as those with substance abuse and emotionaldisorders and with chronic medical conditions; see Henggeler, 2006).Without such services, youth aging out of the foster care system will continue to suffer, and given the extent ofproblems in young adulthood, it is likely that many of these youth will become more marginalized in adulthood.The human and financial costs to society will continue to grow more substantial. Given the current economiccrisis in both nations, these youth can be expected to face even more formidable barriers to successful entry intothe job force and housing market.317