Los Angeles County Spotlight: A Trauma-Informed Approach to the Homeless Services System

Recent data from Homeless Management Information System in Los Angeles County shows a six percent increase in the number of young children ages 0-5 experiencing homelessness from 2016 to 2019, from 28,776 to 30,543 young children. This number may have increased with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiencing homelessness in childhood is widely acknowledged as a risk factor for behavioral health challenges, engagement in risky behavior, low school engagement, and poorer health.

First 5 LA and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles have had a strategic partnership since 2017 through the Home For Good (HFG) Funders Collaborative, which sought to expand focus to include families experiencing homelessness. Specifically, funding was provided to enable HFG to infuse trauma- and resiliency-informed care into the homeless services system in Los Angeles. A trauma- and resiliency-informed care workgroup of service providers and system leaders met to inform and support innovation efforts and identified three key levers of change: Space, Systems, and Services.

• Space: We partnered with HOK Group Inc., a design, architecture, engineering and planning firm, to draft best practices recommendations on creating trauma-informed spaces which can be found in the Minimizing Trauma & Support Resiliency through Design standards. The findings from this report and the experts who developed it are working in partnership with United Way to infuse trauma-informed design standards into targeted existing shelters through its Shelter Improvement Initiative which aims to increase client and staff feelings of safety and dignity when living and working in interim housing spaces and improve housing outcomes for shelter clients.
• Systems: We partnered with the Child Development Institute and local family shelter provider Ascencia to develop and pilot training on trauma- and resiliency-informed care for family service providers. The training is to be incorporated into the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) Centralized Training Academy, and consists of four modules:
  1. Early Brain Development: Understanding the Stress Response, Regulatory and Sensory Systems
  2. Trauma-Informed Care & Applying a Trauma-Informed Lens
  3. Responding to Homeless Families and Children: Promoting the Protective Factors
  4. Creating a Supportive Work Environment through Reflection and Self Care

The next phase of this partnership will focus on the third identified lever of change:

• Services: Recognizing that many families experiencing homelessness in L.A. County are currently sheltered in motels rather than congregate shelters, this decentralized approach can make coordinated assessment of needs and connection to resources and services difficult. The next stage of this partnership will pilot an intervention for families temporarily placed at a motel where LA Family Housing provides supportive services. LAFH is in the Los Angeles County Coordinated Entry System which facilitates the coordination of housing resources and services. Specifically, the intervention will provide the opportunity to 1) learn more about the service needs of families with young children, 2) connect children to health and education resources, and 3) provide mental health and other supportive services to heads-of-household to support permanent re-housing/stable housing for the family unit.

Ann Isbell                  aisbell@first5la.org

Sarah Rubinstein     srubinstein@unitedwayla.org