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Abstract
Homelessness remains a national concern that affects the lives of many individuals. Approximately one-third of the homeless population includes family households (Havlik & Bryan, 2015; HUD, 2016; National Coalition for the Homeless, 2009), with over 22% being minors. Professional school counselors are responsible for addressing and supporting "students’ academic, personal-social and career development needs by designing, implementing, evaluating and enhancing a comprehensive school counseling program that promotes and enhances student success" (ASCA, 2012; Paragraph 1). Additionally, school counselors are to foster a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for underserved and at-risk populations to ensure they are neither stigmatized nor isolated based on their circumstances (ASCA, 2016). A non-experimental, correlational survey design was used to explore the relationship between the multicultural self-efficacy, empathy, and training of school counselors (N=259) and their knowledge and skills related to supporting homeless students. A standard multiple regression indicated that although school counselors’ multicultural self-efficacy and training were statistically significant and positively correlated to their knowledge and skills supporting homeless students, empathy was insignificant. The significance of training as a partial and total mediator was assessed through PROCESS and determined that training partially mediates the relationship between the multicultural self-efficacy of school counselors and their knowledge and skills supporting homeless students.