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Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 994–1001

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Social Science & Medicine

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/socscimed

‘‘Are we moving again this week?’’ Children’s experiences of homelessness inVictoria, Australia

Maggie Kirkman a,*, Deborah Keys b, Daria Bodzak a, Alina Turner a

a Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, The Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australiab Research and Social Policy Unit, Melbourne Citymission, Victoria, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 1 February 2010

Keywords:AustraliaChildrenHomelessnessSupport services

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ613 8344 0759; fax:E-mail address: m.kirkman@unimelb.edu.au (M. K

0277-9536/$ – see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.12.004

a b s t r a c t

This research aimed to gain insight into the homelessness experience of children accommodated intransitional support services in an urban setting in Australia. It joins a limited international literature.Interviews incorporating interactive activities were conducted with 20 children aged 6–12 from diverseethnicities and cultural backgrounds, most of whom were living in supported accommodation. Twelveparents/guardians were also interviewed. Children had experienced between 3 and 11 changes of resi-dence, including hotels or motels, refuges, sleeping rough or in cars, rooming or boarding houses, andcaravan parks. It was evident that homelessness adversely affected children’s sense of security, mood,behaviour, physical health, education, and overall experience of childhood. As families moved from onetemporary accommodation to the next, they often lost touch with the extended family and their friends,became disconnected from any sense of community, and did without familiar possessions, treasures,toys, and pets. Experiencing chaotic sequences of accommodation could leave children feeling confused,insecure, sad, and angry. It could make children feel responsible for their discouraged and unwell parentsand their younger siblings. Homelessness made many children expect instability as a way of life. Childrencontinued to be affected by problems that preceded or precipitated homelessness, such as familyviolence, broken relationships, and parents grappling with drug and alcohol dependence. The over-whelming conclusion to be drawn from this research is that children affected by homelessness needsecurity, stability, and the chance to become and remain part of a community.

� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Homelessness is a significant problem for Australian children.Data collected from Australia’s Supported Accommodation andAssistance Program (SAAP, hereafter referred to as the Accommo-dation Program) indicate that the numbers are substantial andrising. In the 2006–2007 SAAP data collection period, 69,100accompanying children were assisted by program-funded services;of these, just under a third (21,400) were in the state of Victoria(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2009). Morethan a quarter (29%) of all accompanying children were aged 5–9years. These figures are underestimates because children who donot attend Accommodation Program services are not reported bythe data collection agency. Although the state of Victoria hasa lower rate of homelessness (44 per 10,000 population) thanAustralia as a whole (53 per 10,000), a greater proportion of itshomeless population uses support and accommodation servicesrather than sleeping rough or staying temporarily with other

þ613 9347 9824.irkman).

All rights reserved.

households (31% compared to 19% in Australia as a whole) (AIHW,2009; Chamberlain & MacKenzie, 2009).

The Accommodation Program is the major service-deliveryresponse to homelessness in Australia, with costs shared by Federaland State Governments. It provides recurrent funding to non-government, local, and community organisations, with the mainaim of providing crisis and transitional supported accommodationand related support services to people who are homeless or at riskof homelessness. The Accommodation Program was not designedfor children, who are not identified as clients in their own right(Strategic Partners Pty Ltd, 1997). Their needs are commonlyunassessed and unmet because of lack of resources, staff skills, andtime; it is also assumed that meeting the needs of parents will flowon to accompanying children (Horn & Jordan, 2007; McNamara,2007; Resolve Community Consulting, 2004; Strategic Partners PtyLtd, 1997).

Growing awareness of the needs of children who are homelesswith their families in Australia reflects greater internationalawareness and increased research. However, researchers mostcommonly gather information about children’s health and well-being from their parents and workers in the field. Reluctance to

M. Kirkman et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 994–1001 995

interview children arose from perceptions of children as immatureor unreliable reporters and from valid ethical concerns aboutexposing vulnerable children to additional distress. Engagementwith children has been predominantly through the administrationof scales and standardised tests.

There is a handful of studies reporting interviews with childrenabout their experiences of homelessness in the United States(Anooshian, 2003, 2005; Baumann, 1996, 1999; DeForge, Zehnder,Minick, & Carmon, 2001; Herth, 1998; Heusel, 1995; Schmitz,Wagner, & Menke, 2001), the United Kingdom (Halpenny, Keogh, &Gilligan, 2002), and Australia (Moore, Noble-Carr, & McArthur,2007; Resolve Community Consulting, 2004; Strategic Partners PtyLtd, 1997). Children express sadness, anxiety, and a sense of loss;they miss familiar environments, family members, pets, andpossessions. Their feelings of safety and security are oftencompromised, and they reveal a desire for stability and permanenthousing. However, it is evident that children do not experiencehomelessness identically despite sharing similar circumstances.

The literature reveals that children who are homeless are at riskof poor health and diminished well-being; their development(physical, psychological, social, and educational) can be damagedand delayed by disruptions to important relationships and thefailure to establish or maintain a familiar environment (Cumella,Grattan, & Vostanis, 1998; Davey, 1998; DeForge et al., 2001; Efron,Sewell, Horn, & Jewell, 1996; Grant et al., 2007; Lindsey, 1998;McLean et al., 2004; Menke & Wagner, 1998; Moore et al., 2007;Page & Nooe, 2002; Schmitz et al., 2001; Vostanis, Grattan, &Cumella, 1997; Zima, Wells, & Freeman, 1994). The introduction ofstability can reduce behavioural problems (Douglass, 1996).Although most studies have found that children who are homelessexperience greater problems than housed low-income children, theresults are complex (Buckner, 2008), with children also affected bymatters other than housing status, such as lack of overall stability(Schmitz et al., 2001) and the mother’s psychological status (Bas-suk, Weinreb, Dawson, Perloff, & Buckner, 1997; Graham-Bermann,Coupet, Egler, Mattis, & Banyard, 1996; Harpaz-Rotem, Rosenheck,& Desai, 2006).

Given the adverse consequences for children and the scale ofthe problem, it is of critical importance to understand more fullythe impact of homelessness on the lives of these children. TheCommonwealth Government’s White paper, The road home:A National approach to reducing homelessness, notes that ‘‘thepotential impact of homelessness on young children is extremelyserious and can only be addressed by a specific focus on theirneeds’’ (Department of Families, Housing, Community Servicesand Indigenous Affairs, 2008, p. 11). There is increasing recogni-tion that children have the right to be consulted in matters thataffect them and that ‘‘research about children should be withchildren and not something that is done to children’’ (Greig,Taylor, & McKay, 2007, p. 173). Our approach reflects the view thatchildren deserve to be treated respectfully as actors in their ownlives and to be enabled to express their own views in personrather than by proxy.

The aim of our research, therefore, was to contribute to thegrowing understanding of the homelessness experience ofaccompanied children by communicating with children accom-modated in transitional support services in a large urban context inAustralia. While maintaining the emphasis on children’s partici-pation and experiences, it was decided to provide additionalcontext by interviewing the participants’ parents or guardians.Specific research questions were:

� What is children’s understanding of home and homelessness?� What is the impact of homelessness on the health and well-

being of children?

� What effect does homelessness have on relationships betweenchildren, parents, and other family members?� What effect does homelessness have on children’s non-familial

social networks and sense of social connectedness?

Method

A qualitative method was chosen because our goal was tounderstand a phenomenon from the perspective of participants inthe research (Rice & Ezzy, 1999).

Ethical matters

Approval to conduct the research was obtained from theUniversity of Melbourne Behavioural and Social Sciences HumanEthics Sub-Committee of the Human Research Ethics Committee.A reference group was appointed to oversee the project. Twomembers of the reference group were managers of servicesproviding assistance to families experiencing homelessness, twowere homelessness researchers in a similar service, and two werefrom the Victorian body representing individuals and organisationswith a stake or interest in homelessness.

We sought informed consent from all participants. Children weregiven an information letter, a charter of rights, and a consent form,written in accessible language, adapted from existing documents(Moore, McArthur, & Noble-Carr, 2008). The research was designedto ensure protection, privacy, and confidentiality, and took account ofthe power imbalance between children and adults, especially caseworkers and the researcher. Children were asked by the interviewer(DB or AT) if they would like to be interviewed alone or with a familymember or service worker. The interviewer was sensitive to indi-vidual circumstances in ensuring that each child was able to exercisechoice. If the child chose to be interviewed alone, the researchertreated the information given by the child as confidential, planningto reveal to a case worker or parent only disclosure of abuse or thechild’s experience of distress provoked by the interview. Participa-tion was designed to be a pleasurable experience for children and asbenign as possible for adults, but the researcher was alert to thepossibility of distress and prepared to stop an interview as appro-priate, guided by a protocol for managing adverse events.

Recruitment

We planned to recruit 20 children (10 boys, 10 girls) aged 5–12years, currently supported or accommodated (with at least oneother family member) by youth or family homelessness servicesbut not, for ethical reasons, living in crisis accommodation. Our goalwas that each parent who gave permission for a child to participatewould also consent to being interviewed, but this was nota prerequisite for a child’s participation.

Services working with people experiencing homelessness werenotified of the research. Ethical matters and procedures wereexplained to interested case workers who then approached parentsof children identified as eligible. Case workers liaised with volun-teer parents and the researcher to arrange interviews. Althoughfunding did not extend to translation of materials or employment ofinterpreters, efforts were made to include participants fromculturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Procedure

Children and parents were interviewed at the services fromwhich they were recruited or at their homes with a case workerpresent. A parent of each participating child was asked to complete

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a questionnaire giving background information. Interviews tookplace from November 2008 to May 2009.

Interviewing childrenChildren were interviewed using open questions to encourage

them to tell their story in their own words. To make the experiencemore enjoyable and to provide a range of ways to communicatetheir stories, each child was offered a set of activities derived fromthe Mosaic approach (Clark & Moss, 2001) and based on activitiesused in the Australian Capital Territory study (Moore et al., 2008;Noble-Carr, 2007). Activities included ‘‘About Me’’ and ‘‘Friends’’activity sheets with stickers, sentence-completion cards aboutfeelings and safety, a spider diagram for illustrating the frequencyof activities, and a page for drawing ‘‘My Family’’. Children weregiven paper and pencils for drawing the places in which they hadlived, with car stickers to represent moves. There were also boxesmarked ‘‘Big Worry’’, ‘‘Medium Worry’’, and ‘‘Little Worry’’ in whichcards on which children had described their worries could beposted. The interview concluded by asking the children what theywould wish for if they were granted three wishes. (Details ofchildren’s activities are available from the first author.) After theinterview, children were given a small gift to the value of $5 tothank them for their participation.

The children’s interview and activities were piloted by fivechildren (aged 5–12) known to members of the reference group,after which minor changes to content and design were made.

Interviewing parentsOne parent or guardian (hereafter ‘‘parent’’) for each child

completed a questionnaire giving demographic information abouttheir family, including housing history and the number of schoolsattended by children. Parents were interviewed about their child-ren’s experience of homelessness and unstable housing, in thecontext of the parents’ stories of their own experiences. Childrenwere invited to another room with the service worker duringparents’ interviews but they did not always remain out of earshot.Families were compensated $50 for their time.

Analysis

Questionnaire data were summarised. All interviews wererecorded, with the participants’ permission, and transcribed.Pseudonyms were given to each participant and identifying detailsremoved from the transcripts or disguised. Analysis was informedby Bruner’s (1986) theory of the narrative mode of thought and themeaning-making in which individuals engage as they try tounderstand their place in the world. The first author was theprimary analyst who read all transcripts repeatedly; each was readby up to three of the authors. Thematic analysis was guided by theaims of the research and discussed among all authors. Constantcomparative analysis was used to conceptualise possible relationswithin the data.

Results and discussion

Parents and their children were remarkably willing to partici-pate in the research, given their circumstances, but the instabilitywith which they lived inevitably affected their capacity to makeand keep appointments. Nevertheless, the goal of 20 child partici-pants was achieved, although only 12 adults with adequate Englishwere willing to be interviewed (11 mothers and 1 grandmotherwith guardianship). In five instances, two children from the samefamily were interviewed; four of these instances includeda participating parent, meaning that 16 children had a parentparticipating in the research.

The children’s interviews took about 45 min each, with a rangeof 25–75 min. Interviews with parents lasted about 30 min, witha range of 15–50 min.

Participants

According to questionnaire responses, most children and theirparents were born in Australia and identified as Anglo–Australian,although they represented a wide range of cultural identificationincluding Indigenous Australian, Italian, English, Greek, LebaneseMuslim, Turkish, Nigerian, Maori, and African American. Theparticipating children (12 girls and 8 boys) were aged from 6 to 12years. There were 36 children altogether in the participatingfamilies, ranging in age from infants to 19 years. The majority ofchildren were living in transitional supported accommodation andhad been there for less than a year, although five children had beenin one place for longer than a year. The adults most commonlyreported that they were not living permanently with their partnersand had limited social support for their families, with the mainsource being a service worker. Government benefits and allow-ances were the primary source of income for almost all adults;more than half reported experiencing times when the family hadno income.

Children had undergone many accommodation moves, withalmost all adults reporting between 3 and 11 changes of residenceduring the lives of children interviewed. One child had moved 12–14 times, and older children in some families were reported asexperiencing 15–17 moves. Accommodation since becominghomeless included, in order of frequency, hotels or motels, othervarieties of emergency accommodation, refuges, sleeping rough orin cars, rooming or boarding houses, and caravan parks. Childrenalso described camping, although this category was not specified inthe questionnaire. Very few children had attended only one school;almost all children interviewed had been to more than three. Five ofthe children interviewed had attended five or more schools.

Children’s interviews

Most children appeared to enjoy the interview and associatedactivities, although some were clearly sad as they recounted diffi-cult aspects of their lives. Whether or not they could communicatetheir thoughts and feelings verbally, all children revealed compo-nents of their stories through the activities, such as posting worriesin a box or drawing. Their comments and drawings remind us that,although these are children whose lives have been disrupted byhomelessness, they are also children with the interests and quirksand charm and problems of children everywhere.

Children often conveyed a different perspective from the parentwho was interviewed. If parents had tried to protect their childrenfrom insecurity and worry, children could describe relativelybenign circumstances while parents revealed greater problems. Ifparents were overwhelmed or incapacitated by their experiences,they might be unaware of or underplay their children’s distress orawareness of homelessness. Having (in five cases) more than onechild from the same family contributed to an appreciation offamilies’ changing circumstances: Family structure, family life, andfamily housing were not the same for each child.

It was evident that children’s experiences of unstable housingand homelessness are complex and dynamic. Complexity, change,and individual variation could nevertheless be accommodatedwithin themes that are consistent with the research questions. Thethemes are ‘Home, homelessness, and housing instability’; ‘Healthand well-being’; ‘Parental and family relationships’; ‘Communityconnectedness’; and ‘Participation in education’. Each theme isdescribed in the sections that follow. We do not give numbers of

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children in each category because children reported differentfeelings or meanings associated with various periods in their lives,and because parents and siblings might give differing accounts.Rather than assess ‘truth’ claims, we acknowledge the reality ofdiverse and changing perspectives, all of which contribute tocomplex experiences (Bruner, 1986, e.g. page 46). In each case,examples rather than complete lists are provided.

Home, homelessness, and housing instability

Children helped us to understand various aspects of theirconcept of ‘Home’ and ‘Homelessness’, usually indirectly ratherthan in overt statements. They also gave evidence of the effects ofinstability as well as of remarkable optimism.

For many of the children, as has been found elsewhere (Mooreet al., 2007), home is where significant family members live. Forexample, Salim (12) said that ‘‘a house is just a house’’ and he feelsat home with his family. Charity (11) valued their new house, butbeing home and safe also meant to her that ‘‘I’ve got my familyaround me’’. Charity said she felt safe in the past, even with movesand bad people, because ‘‘we always had Mum with us’’.

Although space does not define a home, one criterion of a goodhome is being not too cramped. Kane (6), for example, loved hiscurrent accommodation because ‘‘It has my own room’’. Accordingto his mother, ‘‘He’ll say, ‘Oh, remember when we lived in that onelittle room?’ Because it was just such a hard time for him’’. Lack ofpersonal space and privacy was also perceived as difficult by chil-dren in shelters or emergency accommodation in the US, Ireland,and Australia (DeForge et al., 2001; Halpenny et al., 2002; StrategicPartners Pty Ltd, 1997). Privacy can be compromised by having toshare accommodation, especially in emergency housing, so oneimportant criterion of home is not living with other people, especiallystrangers. Duane (12) thought of his current place as home becauseit was not shared with anyone apart from family members.

A satisfactory sense of home is best achieved in a safe neigh-bourhood with things to do locally. Having friendly neighbours andnot living among people affected by drugs and behaving violentlywas a common theme in children’s accounts of ‘home’. Angela (11)liked the size of their current house but did not feel safe therebecause ‘‘most of the time when I0m trying to get to sleep, like youwould hear like music and people screaming, and it’s reallyannoying. And there’s this guy that lives down the street and he’s –and we’re not allowed to talk to anyone but especially him ’cause .he scares me. . And my mum said that he was out of gaol’’.Exposure to violence is an all-too-common experience in thehomeless population (Moore et al., 2007; Nunez, 2000).

Home needs to be secure; it is important to children to live ina place that is robust and not temporary. Britney (6) described hercurrent house as not feeling like home because ‘‘everything’sfalling apart and everything’s getting ruined and there’s a hole inthe roof and there’s heaps of problems about it because it’s sosmall and I see things wrecked and stuff’’. Temporary accommo-dation, however pleasant, sometimes does not feel like home.Madison’s (11) great hope was to be ‘‘safe and settled in our ownhouse with no trouble around the neighbourhood or anything’’.Miranda (12) was thrilled that they had their own house, built bya charitable organisation: ‘‘We don’t have to move again. It’sours’’.

Some children cherished a past in which the family seemed to behappy, safe, and together; home was represented by something thatthey once had and for which they yearn. Duane (12) said that hismain home will always be their original family home in anotherState; it was ‘‘beautiful there’’ and he misses his friends. This is theonly place for which Duane gave a full address. Annemarie (8) saida place that felt like home would be like ‘‘our old house’’, and

Angela (11) longed for the place where the family lived with herfather before he left.

Most children did not tackle the topic of homelessness directly, ordid not accept that they had been homeless. (For ethical reasons theinterviewer did not emphasise the concept with children, some-times not even naming it.) Maria (12), for example, said she had hadmany moves but had never been homeless. Agatha (12) said shewas not aware of homelessness when she was very young but feltsad in retrospect, mostly for her parents: ‘‘When I was little, wedidn’t have anywhere to go, and I was too little to really knowanything, so when my parents told me I got a bit upset and justthought about what they had to go through. It made me a bit upsetand stuff to hear about it’’. Some children associated homelessnessonly with sleeping rough; few had had that experience althoughsome had feared it and hated not knowing where they would sleepeach night. Charity (11) said, ‘‘It’s really hard, ’cause you never –’cause we don’t really know where we’re moving to, and we neverhave anything with us.’’ A further refinement of the experience ofhomelessness was having ‘‘barely any food’’ (Britney, 6) while intemporary accommodation.

The meaning and effects of homelessness were evident inchildren’s accounts, particularly in memories of chaotic sequences ofaccommodation. Simone (12) was one of the children who had toask her mother to help her list all the places in which they had lived,saying, ‘‘Does it include if we only stayed there for a few nights?’’Britney (6) said that moving made her feel ‘‘angry and weird’’; hermother said that Britney had moved nine times, during which theywere in danger from an ex-partner as well as dealing with problemsarising from the mother’s drug dependency: ‘‘Britney was – she wasconfused, very confused. She’s like, oh, ‘Are we moving again thisweek? Are we going to move again this week?’ And it’s like, ‘I don’tknow’.’’

Children often expressed a significant consequence of home-lessness as leaving behind familiar things or doing without them.Annemarie (8) said their first move was sudden and away from allthat was familiar, including her pets. Several children felt that theyhad been denied pets because there was nowhere reliable to keepthem, and others had had their toys packed away for years and hadnothing to play with.

One striking feature of the children’s accounts was that, formany, instability is expected. Staying for a long time might be ‘‘oneor two years’’, as Maria (12) said. The mother of Darcy (10) said ofher children, ‘‘They know that one day we might get kicked out onthe street again.’’ According to his grandmother, Robert (6) needsfrequent reassurance that he is secure with her despite his chaoticlife, including the incarceration of her partner for violence and thedrug problems of his mother. The mother of Angela (11) andDominique (8) was not the only one to say that they did not fullyunpack but kept an accessible pile of clothes for each familymember, ready to move at short notice.

Despite the vicissitudes of their lives, some children showedremarkable optimism, identifying each move as a new opportunity.Madison (11) described making the small space in which she andher mother lived ‘‘tidy’’ and ‘‘cosy’’, a kind of bulwark against thethreatening neighbours who made her feel ‘‘scared’’. Angela (11),when asked what it was like for her when she moves house, said,‘‘Scared, but always thinking of, like, ‘This could be a good oppor-tunity, like, for something new, and to start something different’.’’

Health and well-being

The adverse effects of homelessness on children’s health andwell-being were evident in the interviews, echoing results from theliterature. Some children were consulting mental health profes-sionals. Children’s and adults’ accounts of problems were usually

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complementary, although sometimes adults told of problems notrevealed by the children and some parents seemed unaware ofchildren’s worries. In general, homelessness appeared to haveaffected children’s sense of security, their mood and behaviour, theirphysical health, and even their capacity to experience childhood.

The insecurity and loss evident in all aspects of the children’slives brought profound unhappiness. Zaina (6), for example, said,‘‘The old house doesn’t make me cry; this house makes me cry.Yeah, when I go to school, that school makes me cry, and otherschool doesn’t make me cry’’. The mother of Angela (11) andDominique (8) described them as ‘‘upset and crying’’ when she hadto take them out of school and move from motel to motel, addingthat they became ‘‘depressed’’ as the weeks went by. Others havefound that the multiple losses associated with homelessness leavechildren sad and anxious (Moore et al., 2007; Resolve CommunityConsulting, 2004).

A few children were chronically angry. Britney (6) revealeddiffuse and powerful anger throughout the interview; it seemed tobe often directed at her mother and her brother. Darcy (10) boastedof being violent towards his mother’s friends and their childrenwhen Darcy’s family was staying with other families, and he pridedhimself on being the school bully. John (9) said he gets very angry,sometimes punching walls and his sister: ‘‘The friend’s we’restaying at, he’s going to get me a punching bag so instead of takingit out on her, I can take it out on the punching bag. And he’s going toget me boxing gloves so I don’t hurt my knuckles, or sprain my armlike I did last time.’’

The absence of structure and predictability may well beresponsible for the behavioural problems identified in some chil-dren. The mother of Duane (12) said that he had stolen from schooland that she was working with his teachers to help him. A fewparents described the onset of bedwetting in their school-agedchildren, associated with losing their familiar home and routine.One of these was Kane (6), whose mother did what she could tohelp him feel secure and happy, such as taking him to the library orthe park, and even putting up a tent for him in their single room togive him some privacy.

Physical ill-health could be associated with homelessness. Emily(10) developed anaemia, saying she did not eat a lot at the time itwas diagnosed. According to Emily’s mother, ‘‘She was very thin,and I thought – to me, it looked like she was eating. . You knowwhen you’ve got all these things as a parent, you can miss littlethings in your children.’’ Emily’s mother also said that her youngestchild missed a screening test at school because they were movingso often, but her hearing deficit was eventually recognised. Somechildren had health problems not caused by homelessness butexacerbated by instability. Britney (6), for example, had severeeczema and a range of allergies, and Robert (6) was described by hisgrandmother as having a developmental disorder and attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder.

In some cases, children’s health and well-being were adverselyaffected by problems that preceded and contributed to homelessness.Family violence, especially intimate-partner violence, was the mostobvious. Britney (6) experienced repeated threats and gunshotsfrom her mother’s partner; John (9) was aware of violent acts fromseveral family members towards his mother, including ‘‘my step-dad put a knife to my mum’s throat, and there’s sort of a scar there’’.Marriage break-up was also a sadness for children in itself and oftenthe beginning of homelessness.

Children were often very concerned about the health and well-being of their parents. Fathers had had heart attacks, one mother hadhad a stroke, a few had chronic health problems, but some childrenjust worried about their parents’ unhappiness and difficult lives.A few children were coping with parental drug and alcohol abuse.Concern about parents was frequently associated with a child

assuming parental responsibility. The mother of Madison (11) said,‘‘She wants to be an adult since all this has been happening; like shewants to be the boss and she thinks that I0m the child. She likes totell me what to do’’. Other researchers have found homeless chil-dren assuming responsibility for the care and protection of parents(Horn & Jordan, 2007; Moore et al., 2007; Zammit, 2008), partic-ularly where there is family violence, parental mental illness, orparental drug or alcohol abuse (Moore et al., 2007).

Some children described people who contributed to their well-being. Madison (11) praised a helpful school principal; Angela (11)valued the attention of the family’s case worker, who ‘‘gave me likesomeone to talk to, which was her, so that if I had any worries oranything’’. Agatha (12) was grateful for the opportunities she had atschool, supportive teachers, and extra activities. It is important tonote that Miranda (12) and her sister Charity (11) demonstrated thesense of well-being from having their own house through a charitableorganisation. Charity said, ‘‘I have my own room, and it’s evenbetter because I know that we won’t move again’’.

Parental and family relationships

Homelessness and unstable housing could adversely affectrelationships within the nuclear family and beyond it to theextended family, as has been found elsewhere (Lindsey, 1998;Moore et al., 2007; Resolve Community Consulting, 2004), althoughsometimes family problems were factors in the initiation ofhomelessness. Relationships between children and their parentscan change in complex ways, including the ‘clinginess’ of childrento their mothers and the assumption by children of the parentalrole, both described in the previous section.

Some children spoke of close and nurturing families; often theywere families that had stayed intact. For example, Agatha (12) saidthat, after the most recent move, ‘‘I think we became more closer asa family’’. Haydar (9) spoke of enjoying being with his family andfeeling safe when they all (parents and two children) shared a bed,which Haydar described as a fold-out sofa bed.

While parents did their best for their children under very tryingcircumstances, examples were recounted of poor relationships withparents because of homelessness. Parents have so much to deal withthat they might not be available to their children, possibly perceivingthe children as demanding more than they are capable of giving.Britney (6) expressed anger at her mother for the homelessness, lackof privacy, and being pregnant, saying that she would prefer to staywith her grandmother. The mother of John (9) said that her rela-tionship with him had deteriorated since they had been homeless,reporting that John ‘‘wants attention, but it’s like, ‘Hello? How manykids I got?’ . I have five. I have four at home and one in care’’.

Some children have also experienced poor or lost relationshipswith siblings because of housing problems. When the family had toleave his father in another State, Duane (12) lost contact witha brother who stayed behind; Duane said he missed him andworried about him. Other children lost contact with teenagesiblings who chose to be independent. A few children, such asDominique (8), described bossy older siblings – in each case, thosewho appeared to have adopted a parenting role – and said that theyfought with them. These disputes sounded no more serious thansiblings everywhere could describe, although the extra responsi-bility assumed by the older child could be attributed to the family’shomelessness. There has been some acknowledgement that siblingrelationships can be affected by homelessness (Moore et al., 2007),although it is not a well-researched topic.

Poor or diminished relationships with the extended family could becaused by moving away or by what precipitated the move. Forexample, the mother of Duane (12) said that her ex-husband hadrefused to allow her to have contact with other people, including

M. Kirkman et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 994–1001 999

her extended family, and that relationships had still not beenrestored. The mother of Miranda (12) and Charity (11) said that theyhad lost contact with the extended family when they were home-less because they had to move away, but also because she lacked‘‘the patience’’ to make the visits when their clothes were in storageand life was just too hard. Once they were in their own home, theywere able to invite their extended family to visit. Miranda said, ‘‘Thehappiest I ever felt was this Christmas, . when we had Christmas atour house, so everyone was there; . Nan, Pop, our aunties, Mum’’.

Community connectedness

Children’s accounts gave insights into lost connections withcommunities, yearning for past experiences of belonging toa neighbourhood, and inability to establish new connectionsbecause of transitory accommodation.

Most children described experiences of being disconnected fromthe community because they move too frequently to know theneighbourhood and to feel they belong. According to Charity (11),‘‘When you keep moving around, you don’t know any of the peoplearound you, so. But when you’re in a house that you can stay in, youknow that people are there, and you know who they are, and youknow that they’re nice or that they’re not’’. Children also feltdisconnected because the area felt alien or unsafe. For example,Madison (11) loved her school and had friends there, but hated theviolence and unpredictability of her neighbourhood, where ‘‘I feela bit scared’’. Although she and her mother knew they neededstability and wanted to be part of a community, Madison’s mothersaid that the most important thing for her family was ‘‘to get out ofwhere we are. . It’s a really, really rough area, and we have troublethere all the time. So we’re thinking about moving again. . I0m justsick of moving. I just want to be in one place where I0m happy’’.

Joining a club or organisation is a good way to become part ofa community, but children who are without stable accommodationcan miss extra-curricular activities. John (9) said, ‘‘I used to playbasketball, but we had to move to here’’. The mother of Angela (11)and Dominique (8) said they could not enrol in any activities, suchas ‘‘dancing, singing, acting’’, because, when you are homeless, ‘‘youcan’t plan’’. This was a common theme. More than half of thechildren never participated in sporting teams outside school hours;a substantial minority never had a school friend over to play.

Participation in education

Children changed schools frequently. This can have adverseconsequences for their commitment and sense of belonging toa school community, their social networks, and their educationalachievements, as has been found elsewhere (Horn & Jordan, 2007;Keogh, Halpenny, & Gilligan, 2006; Rafferty, Shinn, & Weitzman,2004). Because school is often a central part of a child’s life, theramifications of homelessness can coalesce around school, whichcan represent exclusion, isolation, and failure. Some parents weretoo overwhelmed by the struggles of daily life to maintaina commitment to their children’s education, while others did sodespite their difficult circumstances. The mother of Darcy (10) wasso determined to keep her children at one school in particular that,after they had gone to emergency accommodation, the family roseat 5.30 a.m. on school mornings to make the very long trip to school.

According to her mother, Angela (11) had been so ‘‘scared’’ aboutgoing to yet another school that ‘‘it got to the point where it wasmaking her sick. . There was a lot of crying at school’’. However,‘‘she had a very supportive teacher, . who knew our story andwould help’’. Other parents did not want the school to know abouttheir circumstances because they feared reactions of the kindreported by the mother of Miranda (12) and Charity (11), describing

other children ‘‘Just peer-pressuring and ganging up on thembecause they didn’t have a home’’. The mother of Britney (6) said,‘‘She gets stressed out, upset, having to move away, meet newfriends, especially changing schools. Like she’s going to be changingto her third school this year. . She gets really aggressive and angry,and attitude really big time, and then cries and says she has nofriends, and things like that. .. She says that, sometimes, youknow, ‘I hate that school. I want to go to another one’, so she wantsto change schools every year because she thinks that’s how it goes’’.

One of the most common school-related themes in children’saccounts was the constant making and breaking of friendships,previously noted in the Community Connectedness section. AsEmily (10) said, when you move schools, ‘‘It’s kind of sad, becausethen you miss all your friends that you’ve just made, and they’relike really nice and friendly, and then all of a sudden you lose yourfriends, like your best friends, and then you feel really lonely whenyou get to the new school ’cause you don’t know anyone.’’ Makingfriends could be difficult; Angela, for example, found most of thechildren ‘‘snotty and mean, . sort of like greedy’’. Their materi-alism and confidence in getting ‘‘all the things they want’’ made her‘‘feel, like, left out.’’

Although children, especially the younger ones, tended to speaklittle of school work and to emphasise the social network or senseof exclusion at school, it was evident, sometimes from parents’accounts but also from manifest reading problems, that academicstandards were adversely affected by frequent moves and insecurity.Being in shared or inadequate accommodation made it hard toconcentrate or to find the time and space to read or perform othereducational tasks. John (9) said he had been kept down at schoolbecause he had missed too much school to keep up with the work.The mother of Miranda (12) said that she ‘‘slipped heaps’’ at schoolwith the weight of worry and responsibility she felt with constantlymoving and her mother’s ill-health. Now that the family is settled,Miranda’s mother said, ‘‘I’ve never known a kid to come home fromschool so happy she’s got homework.’’ Some parents, such as themother of Mark (10) and Annemarie (8), said they were unable totell how well the children were doing academically or whether theyhad fallen behind.

Some children made it clear that they felt supported by theirschool. Madison (11) said the school principal had been helpful andprovided extra assistance without charge. An after-school programhad helped her with homework. According to Madison’s mother,‘‘She’s really friendly, so she fits in pretty much straight away. Butit’s just – starting over again, I guess. . She feels a bit embarrassedwhen she first starts a new school. She’s had two new schools in thepast . year and a little bit’’. Children may want to establish them-selves in school as part of a secure life. Simone (12) hoped to stay inher current house because ‘‘it’s close to my school and I don’t reallywant to change again’’.

Conclusion

The research reported here was the first major investigation ofchildren’s perspectives on the experience of homelessness inVictoria and contributes to a limited international literature on thistopic. Interviews with 20 children aged 6–12 from diverse ethnic-ities and cultural backgrounds, most of whom were living in sup-ported accommodation, revealed that children’s experiences ofunstable housing and homelessness encompassed a range ofproblems with their sense of security and well-being, their moodand behaviour, their physical health, their education, and theiroverall experience of childhood.

Children reported most vividly their sense of insecurity, stress,and unhappiness associated with homelessness, echoing theresults of studies from around the world using, on the whole,

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quantitative methods of measurement (such as Davey, 1998; Page &Nooe, 2002). Accounts given by these children and their parents,while not emphasising health, are consistent with earlier findingsof, for example, poor dental health, asthma, and skin problemsamong children experiencing homelessness (Buckner, 2008; Efronet al., 1996; Grant et al., 2007; McLean et al., 2004). It is also evidentfrom these interviews that children were affected by problemspreceding, precipitating, and operating concurrently with home-lessness, as much as or even more than the homelessness itself (asin Schmitz, Wagner, & Menke, 1995). The expressions of violence,aggression, and anger described by some children in this researchare consistent with the effect on children of experiencing andwitnessing violence described by Anooshian (2005).

The children’s interviews suggest that, once children feel securein their housing, their concerns diminish. However, althoughparental health was not explored in this paper, the families repre-sented in this research alert us to the possibility that an importantrole is played by the parents’ physical and mental health status andtheir capacity to be aware of and respond to their children’s needs.These factors (housing stability, parental capacity, and children’ssense of security) are likely to be interrelated.

That some of these children were able to look upon the nextmove as an opportunity should serve to remind us that homelesschildren have strengths as well as problems (see Douglass, 1996;Herth, 1998).

This research was a cross-sectional study of 20 children. As such,its contribution to understanding children’s experiences of home-lessness should be augmented by larger, longitudinal studies thatenable the tracking of children into youth and adulthood, designedto reveal the determinants and associated factors of a range ofoutcomes, including health and well-being, community connect-edness, residential stability, and contact with various governmentand legal systems. These determinants and factors might includethe reason for homelessness, the age at which a child becamehomeless, the duration of unstable housing, the child’s position inthe family, consistency of schooling, the presence of parental illness(physical or mental), history of violence in or to the family, thedegree of community connectedness, and the extent of social andinstitutional support for the family.

Nevertheless, this study has collected complex data from a hard-to-reach population. Its engaging activities and appropriate, flex-ible interview questions encouraged even the youngest children tocommunicate their thoughts and experiences, not only about theirimmediate circumstances but also about their history. The reflec-tions of the children’s parents helped to contextualise and illumi-nate the children’s accounts. It is one of the few examples in theworld of research that enables children who are experiencinghomelessness to be active participants rather than investigatingthem second-hand, through their parents, or assessing theirperformance on standardised tests or other instruments.

The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from this researchis that children whose families are homeless need security,stability, and the chance to become and remain part ofa community. Without these things, children’s health and well-being suffer, their family lives are disrupted, and their educationis limited. Ten-year-old Emily summed up the hopes of the otherchildren when she said, ‘‘I hope that we can move to a new housesoon, so that we don’t have to keep moving back and forth, andforth and back.’’

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