Without A Home: The National Youth Homelessness Survey

families are offered supports (including mediation if that is what is needed),
housing options are explored (including remaining at home, host homes, or
living independently), and attention is paid to helping young people stay
in school or find work. The Youth Connect program in Australia and RAFT’s
Youth Reconnect program in Niagara Region are good examples.
3. School-community partnerships - Early intervention programs
that engage the education system seek to identify young people who are at
risk of homelessness, dropping out of school, or other significant and negative
life altering circumstances. These programs provide the necessary supports
to reduce these risks, strengthen families, and to keep youth in place. Student
Success programs need to be made available to young people who are
deemed to be at risk of homelessness, beginning in middle school.
A strong school-based prevention approach is typically based on collaboration
between schools and local community services. It requires a coordinated
and strategic systems approach, and must necessarily engage, include, and
mandate action from mainstream systems and departments of government,
as well as the homelessness sector. Based on the successful Geelong Project
from Australia, the Upstream Project is being launched in Canada through a
partnership between Raising the Roof, A Way Home Canada, The Canadian
Observatory on Homelessness, and Push for Change.
4. Transitional supports for young people leaving care – A
central task of any prevention agenda should be preventing youth involved
with child protection from becoming homeless. Several communities and
jurisdictions in Canada have developed and implemented effective program
models and interventions that reduce the risk that young people transitioning
from care become homeless. In most of these cases, this involves much more
than simply reforming child protection laws or extending care to an older age.
Rather, effective strategies involve partnerships between government, child
protection services, and those community-based service providers who have
solid experience and expertise in working with at risk youth. The challenge
is to take such successful interventions to scale to ensure that all young
people transitioning from care have some level of ongoing support, including
meaningful adults in their life, and help with systems navigation, school
engagement, and housing. Several countries in Europe are experimenting with
an ‘after care guarantee’ that ensures all young people brought into state care
are provided with ongoing supports until they are 25.
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WITHOUT A HOME: THE NATIONAL YOUTH HOMELESSNESS SURVEY