The Odyssey Project and Community Violence Exposure among Children & Youth Living in Residential Treatment Settings

Neil B. Guterman, Ph.D.

The Odyssey Project is a multi-year national study following children in their journeys through residential treatment settings. This study was described in detail in a previous issue of Practice and Research (Guterman, 1997). This article summarizes the study and describes recent progress.

The Odyssey Project is the first national descriptive and longitudinal study examining the psychosocial characteristics and outcomes of children served in residential treatment settings. Earlier studies have documented the demographic characteristics of children in residential placements (Dore et al., 1984; Pappenfort, 1983; Pappenfort et al., 1973), factors in the post-discharge environment that appear to be associated with positive outcomes (e.g., Wells et al., 1991; Guterman et al., 1989), and ecologically-based factors in a child's life that shape the course of residential treatment and its impact on the resident (Whittaker & Pfeiffer, 1995; Guterman & Blythe, 1986). Lacking, however, is fundamental knowledge about the psychosocial characteristics of children and youth entering residential treatment in the U. S., their experiences prior to entry into residential care, and the services and supports they receive in residence linked with positive outcomes. In response to the pressing need to develop a more comprehensive empirical base undergirding residential care in the U. S., the Child Welfare League of America has enlisted two dozen residential treatment and group home facilities into the Odyssey Project study, with an expected subject enrollment of approximately 2,200 children and youth across the country.

Under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Social Work Practice, three agencies of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services (JBFCS) form sites for the local study: Hawthorne Cedar-Knolls Residential Treatment Center, Linden Hill School, and the Jerome M. Goldsmith Center for Adolescent Treatment. These three sites have enrolled an ethnically diverse sample of 169 children and youths, representing 66% of those eligible. The descriptive phase data collection has been completed at these sites and presently longitudinal data collection continues to follow the youngsters as they journey through residence and after discharge.

At the three JBFCS sites, Center researchers have focused their interests on children's experiences in their home communities, and most particularly on their experiences of community-based violence. Familial factors have long been considered important in the functioning of children served within such clinical settings, yet less focus has traditionally centered on the importance of children's experiences outside the family. Indeed, Odyssey Project Center researchers have reported in initial findings from the study that although clinicians report substantive knowledge of youngsters’ exposure to violence in the home, they appear to be less knowledgeable about a wide variety of community violence experiences, including the most lethal forms (Guterman & Cameron, 1999). Such findings suggest new horizons for clinical assessment, given that community violence exposure has been linked with a host of psychosocial sequelae similar to those found in cases of family violence, and given that such experiences are by all measures more commonly reported than family victimization experiences. Indeed, because of recent high profile tragedies touching the general public like those that occurred at Columbine High School and at a Los Angeles Jewish community center last summer, media sources such as Newsweek, New York Newsday and the Family Therapy Networker have drawn from the Center’s local Odyssey project’s findings in interpreting events for the broader public.

Sequelae found linked with community violence experiences in youngsters have included: symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (Berman et al., 1996; Fitzpatrick & Boldizar, 1993; Horowitz et al., 1995), heightened risk for depression (Freeman et al., 1993; Gorman-Smith & Tolan, 1998), cognitive and academic delays (Osofsky et al., 1993; Shakoor & Chalmers, 1991), and increased aggression (Attar et al., 1994; Cooley-Quille et al., 1995; DuRant et al., 1994). While researchers have struggled to adequately conceptualize and operationally define community violence exposure (Guterman & Cameron, in press), clinicians must strive to effectively address victimization experiences when they occur inside or outside the home. To respond to clinical needs, Center Odyssey project researchers have designed, developed and disseminated a clinical assessment framework, derived from qualitative interviews with study participants (Guterman & Cameron, 1997), aiding therapists in their assessment of young clients’ community violence exposure.

Our understanding of the impact of community violence on youngsters served within clinical settings is limited because the vast majority of empirical studies on this problem have been conducted on non-clinical samples. Given this, the Center’s Odyssey Project researcher team is presently examining how community violence experiences may differ in a clinical sample of youngsters living away from their home communities and what role these may play in their presenting clinical profiles (Guterman, Cameron, & Hahm, 2000). Such findings should make an important contribution to our understanding of the role of community violence experiences not only in youngsters placed within residential treatment settings but also in clients seen in a broad variety of clinical settings.

The study’s principal investigator (local CSSWP site) is Neil B. Guterman, Ph.D.

Bruce Grellong, Ph.D. is co-investigator. Mark Cameron, M.S.W., Peter Tolk, M.S.W. and Hye-Ouk Hahm, M.S. are research assistants. The principal investigator for the national multi-site study is Patrick Curtis, Ph.D. (CWLA). Cynthia Papa-Letini, Ph.D. (Berkshire Farm Center for Children and Youth) and Gina Alexander, M.S.W. (The Villages of Indiana) are co-principal investigators for the national multi-site study.

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