COH-AWH-What_Would_it_Take

Youth identified five systems that are in a position to prevent youth homelessness: education,
child welfare, healthcare and addictions services, the youth homelessness sector, and the
criminal justice system. Youth experienced similar problems in many of these systems. Shared
problems included:
• Difficulty accessing services in one system often made it hard to access services in another
system. As a result, system failures were often mutually reinforcing in young people’s lives.
• The qualifying criteria for supports, services, or benefits were often too high or age
specific, leaving many youth unable to access help.
• Youth were often obliged to meet particular requirements or expectations to receive
services (e.g., checking in with a youth shelter twice each day in order access a bed that
night). Youth described these requirements as complex, frequent, hard to understand, and
hard to navigate.
• Awareness, availability, and appropriateness of services were issues in all systems,
sometimes leaving youth with nowhere to turn for help.
• Youth often lacked the practical tools and resources required to access supports (e.g.,
identification, transit fare), and youth under 16 were often unable to access help without
parental permission.
• Experiences of inequity and discrimination were common in all systems, particularly based
on race, class, disability, sexuality and mental health status.
• Youth consistently experienced challenges with staff and workers in multiple systems,
including: neglect, lack of training, lack of care, discrimination, stigmatizing behaviour, and
failures to respond to abuse and neglect appropriately or adequately.
• Services and systems were often poorly coordinated, making it difficult for youth to
transition from one system or service to another.
• The complex, repetitive barriers that youth faced in multiple systems left them feeling
hopeless, powerless, and alone.
The good news is that because these challenges are shared, we can go farther, faster, if we
work together to learn from these collective difficulties. Likewise, because these systems are
so linked, change in any system (e.g., increased funding for addiction services) may provide
positive outcomes in other systems (e.g., reductions in youth entering the child welfare
system). This means that to be successful, youth homelessness interventions must engage
multiple departments and ministries across all levels of government. Municipal, provincial,
territorial, and federal governments should foster integrated dialogue across departments and
ministries to ensure the systemic barriers created by large systems can be broken down.
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE? 66