Without A Home: The National Youth Homelessness Survey

Reconnecting with social supports also has implications for mental health and well-being.
While social support alone is likely not sufficient to meet the needs of youth facing the
greatest degrees of mental health and addictions challenges, such support may play an
important role in mitigating risk and distress. Social support can be used as a point of
intervention for youth. For example, family interventions, when done thoughtfully, have
been found to reduce addictions (Slesnick & Prestopnik, 2009). However, social support
from other homeless youth can often represent a challenge – particularly in navigating
pathways out of homelessness when such supports often have to be reconsidered and
severed at times for the youth to move forward (Kidd et al., 2016). There is still work
to be done to determine how youth can be best helped in efforts to optimize their
support networks while homeless, and develop relationships that support them out of
homelessness and into roles and activities in the broader community.
5.9 Supporting Youth Voice
Youth experiencing homelessness have a lot to contribute to the discussion about what
needs to be done to end youth homelessness. They know a lot about how systems have
failed them and what supports are necessary. Young people with lived experience should
be part of any planning table.
One of the goals of this
report has been to give voice
to youth. We conclude this
section giving the final word to
young people who participated
in this national survey.
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WITHOUT A HOME: THE NATIONAL YOUTH HOMELESSNESS SURVEY