Bed, Bath, and Beyond: Nature Interventions to Support Family Life in Dutch Women’s Shelters and Shelters for Homeless Families

When families live in shelters, family life can be strained. Living spaces are small, rooms can be noisy and crowded, and there are only few places for children to play. In previous research, parents have expressed that this frustrated their family functioning. That is a problem, because a shelter should function as a safe base from which the family can rebuild its independent life. If the shelter adds stress, it cannot function as intended. To contribute towards the reduction of this problem, nature is introduced at shelter locations, for example by creating gardens. Various studies have already shown that nature can reduce stress and offers an interesting play environment. However, it is important to establish what nature can do for family functioning of families in shelters. We firstly explored professionals’ perspective on the benefits of nature for family life in women’s shelters. Thematic analysis of transcripts of Community of Practice meetings showed five themes. According to professionals, nature (1)offers a place for family leisure time, (2)supports social connectedness, (3)supports psychological well-being, (4)offers metaphoric experiences, and (5)supports parenting. The first four themes are in line with extant literature. Professionals’ explanation of the fifth theme suggests that nature supports parenting by providing relatedness between parent and child, parental feelings of competence, and autonomy in parenting. Relatedness, competence, and autonomy are described as basic psychological needs of parents. We know that all parents experience ups-and-downs in their basic psychological needs, but we do not yet know of circumstances that support need crafting. We designed a quasi-experiment and a single case experiment to test if experiencing nature was associated with parents’ basic psychological needs. A quasi-experiment (N=160) with one measurement in the standard indoor context of the shelter and one measurement while experiencing nature showed that experiencing nature was associated with enhanced need satisfaction (d=0.28) and reduced need frustration (d=−0.24). The effect was especially pronounced for parents with young children. The single case experiment (N=3) involved repeated and randomized exposure to the indoor shelter context and to a natural environment. Parents’ basic psychological needs, parents’ affective state, and satisfaction with life were assessed. Exposure to nature significantly increased parents’ basic psychological need fulfillment but did not significantly improve affective state, nor satisfaction with life. We know from extant literature that parents are more likely to experience well-being and interact positively with their children when their basic psychological needs are fulfilled. For parents and professionals it is helpful to know that something as simple as an activity in nature can support parents. Professionals can use that insight in their supportive work by inviting families to do nature activities. For shelter professionals who want to use nature activities, it may be helpful to learn how other professionals choose nature activities for the support of the families in their care. A case narrative study was aimed to uncover professional choices by analysing case narratives that professionals wrote about the parenting supportive nature activities they employed. The analysis shows that professionals promoted a back-and-forth between children’s exploration away from the parent and return. In facilitating these interactions, professionals used specific qualities of the natural environment. A dimensional framework was extracted that described how professionals may choose activities. The studies in this dissertation show that physical places are related to parents’ basic psychological needs. The physical environment where parenting takes place apparently matters. This makes it interesting to more often ask where family life takes place. Could the physical environment be a possible explanatory factor for family functioning? Could the physical environment have a more prominent role in family supportive work? These now seem interesting angles for future research.