The Ecology of Family Healing
Understanding How Trauma, Housing, and Systems Shape Family Wellbeing
Introduction
Family homelessness is a profound but often overlooked trauma and public health crisis. It emerges not from individual choices, but from systems that fail to provide safety, housing, and opportunity and expose families to chronic stress, racial inequity, and preventable instability.
The Ecology of Family Healing makes these systemic forces visible and offers evidence-based strategies to strengthen stability, dignity, and wellbeing across every level of a family’s environment.
Why This Matters
Nearly 150,000 children experienced homelessness last year across the U.S. This is a clear indication that our systems, not families, need repair.
The Framework
Home, school, services, community, policy, and other systems shape family homelessness. When these systems break down, instability grows. When they work together, families can heal.
Close relationships and daily environments: home, caregiving, routines.
Healing starts here.
