Environmental stressors in relation to behavioral problems among homeless school-age children resident at shelter

ABSTRACT

Homeless children living at shelters, have many stressors facing them daily in the surrounding environment that contributing to behavioral problems [Bassuk, and Gallagher, 1994]. The purposes of this study were to assess a] stressors among school age homeless children resident at Helwan's shelter, b] behavioral problems among school age children resident at Helwan's shelter, and c] to examine the relation between the assessed stressors and behavioral problems of school age homeless children resident at Helwan's shelter. The sample of this study consisted of 30 homeless school age children resident at Helwan's shelter. Five tools were used to collect the data 1] Structured interviewing questioner, 2] the Homeless Interview Schedule-Child's Version [HCIS], 3] Child Adaptive Inventory [CABI], 4] Life event's children Scale, and 5] The Beck Depressive Inventory [BDI]. The results depicted that the areas most frequently reported by school age homeless children as stressful were environmental shelter-life [83%]. The most [96.6%] had antisocial behavior problems. Children's Stressors, life events and children's depressive symptoms were positively correlated with children's behavioral problems [r=0.3 1, P<0.0 1, r=0.20, P<0.05, r=0.25, P<0.01 respectively]. Based on this study finding, it is concluded that Community health nurse can raise the awareness of parent during home visiting to reinforce importance of developing positive parent-child interactions to prevent fleeing children at street. Because the main stressors related to environmental shelter life so training programs should be done for workers at shelter for providing children free environmental stressors and building good communication skills, contributing to developing a sense of empowerment among children to overcome developing stressors and behavioral problems