Building a responsive network of support and advocacy for older African American homeless women through developmental action research
Olivia GM Washington
Healthier Black Elders Center, Center for Urban African American Aging; Research Community Core, College of Nursing and Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan; Wayne State University, Detroit MI, United States of America
David P Moxley
Oklahoma Health Care Authority; Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK, United States of America
Lois Garriott
School of Social Work, Wayne State University, Detroit MI, United States of America
Jennifer P Crystal
Counseling and Psychological Services, Wayne State University, Detroit MI, United States of America
PP: 140 - 160
Abstract
This paper describes the Leaving Homelessness Intervention Research Project (LHIRP), a multimodal intervention that addresses the structural barriers and personal issues older African American women face in overcoming homelessness in a large mid-western city of the United States. The project incorporates a developmental action research design in partnership with homeless and formerly homeless women.
Through developmental testing of interventions, LHIRP identifies promising practices at the individual, group life, intentional community, and city levels. The paper offers a rationale for the integration of both developmental research and action research, particularly community-based participatory inquiry. The authors document the nature of the helping network, identify and describe the project's aims, organizing framework, and methods that document the lived experience of homelessness. Action research strategies that support the design and intervention activities are described, as are the tools used to test promising practices that are useful in helping older women transition and remain out of homelessness.
The paper identifies the knowledge products of the intervention project including lexicon, theory, and frameworks, considers the vicious cycle that serves as an advanced organizer of relevant intervention, illuminates core principles, and examines the importance of the web of affiliation that the project seeks to form among participants, staff, and technical assistants.
Keywords
homelessness, vulnerability, intervention, minority women, action research, community-based participatory research
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