This brief highlights several of the most pressing challenges in addressing the needs of families who are experiencing homelessness and presents a set of strong policy recommendations for assessment, intervention, research, and service delivery related to homeless children and their parents. Chapters increase awareness of the mental health, educational, and developmental challenges faced by these children and their parents. In addition, chapters provide practice implications of current research with a focus on the importance of careful assessment of service and housing needs; individual differences in strengths and adjustment of parents and children experiencing homelessness; and innovative treatment and service delivery approaches to address the unique needs of this population. Featured topics include: Promoting positive parenting among homeless families. Innovative intervention, assessment, and service delivery models. Homeless children and early childhood care and education systems. Early Risers intervention & Community Action Targeting Children who are Homeless Project (Project CATCH). Child and Family Well-Being and Homelessness is an essential resource for policy makers and related professionals and for graduate students and researchers in developmental, clinical, and school psychology; child, youth and family policy; public health; and social work.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a needs assessment of homeless children and explore possible solutions to better meet the needs of homeless children and reduce the risks of intergenerational homelessness in San Bernardino County.

In his preface to this volume, Lester M. Salamon writes that "Homelessness among children and youth is too serious a problem to be ignored in our national social policy. Both for its immediate effects on those who are homeless, and for the inadequacies it reveals in our social support systems, homelessness among children and youth has truly become a national tragedy. If this book helps to bring this problem to national attention, to document its scope and consequences, and to point the way toward possible solutions, it will have amply served its purpose." Based on a conference sponsored by The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies last year, this volume brings together some of the best research and policy analysis ever assembled on this important issue. Among the contributors are Lisa Mihaly, Marjorie J. Robertson, James D. Wright, Yvonne Rafferty, Kay Young McChesney, Chester Hartman, Michael A. Stegman, Linda A. Wolf, and Carol W. Williams. The volume covers issues from the scope of child homelessness to its broader impacts and causes and the social responses needed to copy with it. The volume focuses on two populations with differing needs and solutions: very young children (infants, pre-schoolers, and school age children) who are part of homeless families, and older young people who are homeless but on their own (pregnant teens and teen parents, runaways, and older adolescents). Central to the volume is a critical examination of the health, mental health, developmental and educational impacts produced by homelessness; causes of the problem in society, the economy, and our housing market, and the levels of existing support systems. In short, this is a comprehensive state-of-the-art examination of homelessness as it affects children, and will be greeted as such by policy-makers at all levels of government and by professionals in economics, sociology, social work, and urban studies.