Context and opportunity: multiple perspectives on parenting by women with a severe mental illness.

Objective: The capabilities framework and a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach frame this study. We consider the real opportunities for parenting available for women with serious mental health diagnoses, despite complications posed by their own capacity, material constraints, social network disruptions, and, by law, custom and policy related to mental health conditions and child custody decisions.

Method: We convened focus groups with mothers currently living in shelters apart from their children, service providers in supported housing programs, grandmothers caring for children of mothers with mental health and substance use problems, and a policy discussion with mental health administrators.

Community integration in the early phase of housing among homeless persons diagnosed with severe mental illness: successes and challenges.

The present investigation used qualitative methods to explore the response to housing and experience of community integration of formerly homeless individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness recently housed in both independent and staffed residential settings. Findings indicate that entering into housing after a long period of homelessness is associated with improvements in community integration for most individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness. However, for a meaningful minority, the adaptation to housing may also be associated with challenges that can complicate the integration process.

Two genealogies of supported housing and their implications for outcome assessment.

Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in New York City, the authors distinguish two "genealogies," or developmental traditions, of supported housing. "Housing as housing" originated in the mental health field to champion normalized, less-structured alternatives to clinically managed residential programs. "Integrated housing development" traces its origins to the movement to combat homelessness by preserving and creating affordable housing.