A systematic review: A quest for effective interventions for children and adolescents in street situation

This review on interventions for children and adolescents in street situation (CASS) starts where Dybicz ended his review in 2005. In his conclusion Dybicz pleads for more empirical research addressing the effectiveness of interventions and capturing the voices of different actors involved in intervention programs in a culture and gender sensitive way. Our review began with a broad search for academic literature on interventions for CASS published between December 2004 and October 2011 in English, Portuguese and Afrikaans. We ordered the findings derived from 33 studies in an ecological broad-based integrative model to have an idea about what we can learn from the academic literature. In a second part of this article we attend to the effectiveness of interventions. One of the main conclusions of this review is that the reviewed articles could not give us a clear picture of what is meant by the long-term objectives of interventions for CASS, which is of paramount importance in evaluating them. Furthermore, we noticed that a Western discourse on childhood is predominantly used in the reviewed articles and in the programs described. Finally, we question whether this is the ideal to which we have to interpret the results of the programs.

► Reviewed articles could not clarify long-term intervention goals for CASS.
► A family-like environment is emphasized in the literature on care for CASS.
► Strong partnerships among services are required in the care for CASS.
► A Western discourse on childhood dominates articles on programs for CASS.
► We question the preference of a Western childhood discourse in care for CASS.