Chapin Hall

Supportive Housing Helps Homeless Families Leave Child Welfare System

San Francisco’s Bringing Families Home (BFH) is a state-funded program that provides housing and supportive services to homeless families with child welfare system involvement. Families are eligible for the program if they are receiving in-home services to prevent their children from being placed in foster care or if they have children in foster care and are receiving reunification services. The program is intended to prevent out-of-home placement or facilitate reunification by stabilizing families’ housing and addressing other service needs.

Families that engage in the program receive a permanent housing voucher or temporary housing subsidy, case management services, and support with their housing search. Chapin Hall works closely with project partners in San Francisco to monitor the implementation of BFH and evaluate housing, well-being, and child welfare outcomes.

BFH is the sustained version of Families Moving Forward, a federally funded demonstration project.

Chapin Hall hosted a webinar about this work on Tuesday, January 30, 2024. You can watch the webinar or view the slides by clicking their respective buttons below.

Watch the recording  View slides from webinar

What We Did

We analyzed data for 195 families that enrolled in BFH between July 2017 and June 2023. Those data included information about housing status, receipt of supportive services, and the status of child welfare cases and out-of-home care placements as well as the results of assessments completed by adult family members. We also conducted interviews and surveys with caregivers whose families had exited the program to better understand their experiences.

What We Found

BFH is successfully engaging, housing, and providing supportive services to most referred families. Families that persist in the program experience improved family functioning and increased residential stability. Caregivers report positive experiences with the case management services and housing assistance they receive. Two-thirds of families with a closed reunification case reunified with their children, and few of their children have re-entered care. Additionally, few families with an in-home services case had a child removed from home. Most families exiting BFH are stably housed and remain stably housed after leaving the program.

What It Means

Our findings suggest that supportive housing is a promising approach for helping homeless families with child welfare system involvement stabilize and successfully close their child welfare case. Fewer families with children in foster care—either because out-of-home care placements were prevented or because children were returned to their families—translates into cost savings for state and county child welfare systems.

Watch a video about this work:

Read the report