University community partnerships that promote evidence-based macro practice.

This article articulates three dimensions of EBP grounded in theory for macro practice: intention toward social change, planning and decision-making, and civic participation. These dimensions are then applied to university community partnerships that are complex community interventions. The goals of these partnerships are to improve the social environment in low-income neighborhoods through community development and reform the university as a social institution from neighborhood bystander to responsible, engaged citizen. Finally, the article introduces the concept of a planning triangle, a framework linking evidence derived from community assessments and practice-relevant research to decisive and timely action in the field.

Integrating services for older adults in housing settings.

This paper draws on the work of the Housing Plus Services committee of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (to which the authors belong), constituted in 2000. The Committee is comprised of a diverse group of practitioners, administrators, policy analysts, professors, and researchers who share a commitment to the integration of services in housing settings. Committee members present their work, including the typology and principles discussed in this paper, at national conferences (NLIHC, 2005) and contribute to publications on the web (Housing Plus Services Committee, 2005a) and in print (Cohen, Mulroy, Tull, White, & Crowley, 2004), in order to disseminate the work of the NLIHC in this area and engage in dialogue with service providers, housing developers, and policy makers.

A user-friendly approach to program evaluation and effective community interventions for families at risk of homelessness.

This article demonstrates how a user-friendly evaluation of a federally funded homeless prevention program using an action research approach--and using a logic model as the analytic framework--informed multiple stakeholders, including members of Congress, other decision makers, and Family Center practitioners. The program's target population was very low-income families at risk of being evicted from public housing. The authors discuss the methods used, the application of the logic model, and the study's findings as they unfolded in four phases: (1) logic modeling as program planning, (2) conceptualizing the intervention, (3) delineating implementation processes, and (4) determining the range of client outcomes. Implications for social policy, social work practice, and evaluation research are discussed.

Housing plus services: supporting vulnerable families in permanent housing.

The importance of integrating services with housing to help low-income families achieve stability is gaining recognition. The variations in types of existing housing and service initiatives have produced a complex language with multiple meanings and overlapping definitions. The National Low Income Housing Coalition proposes the umbrella term housing plus services to refer to these programs. Following a review of the literature on the relationship of housing to child well-being, the article discusses and illustrates the National Low Income Housing Coalition's principles for and typology of housing plus services.