Ending Youth Homelessness Before It Begins

According to National Alliance To End Homelessness (2009), Family conflict and abuse are consistently identified by unaccompanied homeless youth as the primary reasons for their homelessness. A system aimed at ending youth homelessness must include prevention and early intervention services that address underlying abuse and family dysfunction and achieve family reunification. Within this framework, prevention services are those that improve family functioning and prevent the abuse and conflict that lead to runaway and throwaway scenarios. Early intervention services are programs designed to respond to the early stages of a youth’s homelessness with re-housing through family reunification, guardianship, or placement in youth housing programs.

Recognizing the need for crisis intervention and prevention activities, the National Alliance to End Homelessness encourages community planners and youth services agencies to develop and implement a service spectrum with the following components:

*Street and community-based outreach to link youth with appropriate services;
*Prevention and early intervention services geared toward family preservation;
*Crisis emergency shelters with case managers seeking family reunification, and;
*Youth housing with positive youth development services.

All of this, are represented in the next diagram:

Author: National Alliance To End Homelessness (2009)

Appendix:

Author: Gulliver, T. (2014) 

Source:

-http://homelesshub.ca/resource/what-are-5-ways-end-homelessness

-http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/ending-youth-homelessness-before-it-begins-prevention-and-early-interventio

Ways To End Youth Homeless

National Alliance to End Homelessness conference in Seattle featured dozens of successful programs across the U.S. The best give homeless youth a meaningful role in program planning. They build on the innate tendency of adolescents to bond with small groups that feel like surrogate families, and teach group members to encourage each other in behaviors that will lead to a better life. Successful programs also ensure that LGBT kids — who represent 20 to 40 percent of homeless youngsters, but just 4 to 10 percent of youth in general — feel welcome.Understandably, building effective programs for these youth is very different from working with homeless adults and families.

There 5 ways to end youth homelessness according to Lighfoot, J. (2013)

1. Preventing youth homelessness and reuniting families:

Kids are less likely to leave home in the first place if they get along with their parents. Cocoon House teaches parenting skills to adults wanting better relationships with their children ages 13 to 17. Coaching is done through confidential phone consultations, support groups and in-home family counseling. Prevention and reconnection have the added benefit of reducing demands on more costly services.

2. Ensuring education and employment opportunities:

Many youngsters in the program secure internships in real-world fields such as construction, food service and computer technology. All participating youth are paid for their time. Program costs are kept low through volunteer support and partnerships with businesses, private foundations, other nonprofits and faith communities.

3. Mobilizing philanthropists:

Funders Together is a national network of philanthropies committed to ending homelessness through strategic collaboration and grant-making.

4. Turning social-service “silos” into systems:

Funders, agencies, and elected officials in King County have formed a Youth and Young Adulta Homelessness task Forceto develop a systems model that will coordinate separate sectors and programs in order to end homelessness among the county's young people.

5. Sending strong messages:

The general public and elected officials must see the value of taking smart steps, now, to end youth homelessness. Conference participants learned from Fostering Media Connections and others how agencies can frame compelling messages aimed at different audiences.

Source:

http://crosscut.com/2013/02/ending-youth-homelessness-5-top-ideas-naeh/

Runaways/Thrownaways around the world

According to Flores, J (2005). says trying to find an accurate “count” of the number of homeless youth is problematic and confusing, with estimates showing wide differences. An older 2002 federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention study estimated 1.65 million youth lived outside of their homes,7 while a decade earlier 2.8 million youth per year were identified as runaways.

The number of U.S. youth estimated to have had a runaway/thrownaway episode in 1999 is 1,682,900 (see table 1). Of these, an estimated 628,900, or 37 percent, were “caretaker missing” youth. Only an estimated 357,600 youth, or 21 percent of all runaways/thrownaways, were reported missing to police or to a missing children’s agency for purposes of locating them.  Based on 17 indicators of harm or potential risk, 1,190,900 of the runaway/thrownaway youth (71 percent) were estimated to be endangered.

And according to Colby, I (2011). In 2007, the number of homeless youth fluctuates between 1 million and 1.7 million. The number of homeless youth in any given year between 1.3 and 2.8 million. In an undated factsheet published by The National Coalition for the Homeless the number of homeless youth is reported to be approximately 1.7 million, a number similar to that reported in a 2009 New York Times article that estimated upwards of 1.6 million youth living on the streets between 2008 and 2010.

Author: Flores, R. (2005)

Source:

-Colby, Ira (2011) "Runaway and Throwaway Youth: Time for Policy Changes and Public Responsibility," Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/childrenatrisk/vol2/iss1/4

-U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. Monthly Postcensal Resident Population, by Single Year of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin (e9899rmp.txt, e9999rmp.txt, and e9900rmp.txt). Web site: eire.census.gov/popest/ archives/national/nat_90s_detail/nat_90s_1.php.

-Finkelhor, D., Hotaling, G., and Sedlak, A. 1990. Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children in America. First Report: Numbers and Characteristics National Incidence Studies. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Appendix:

Author: Flores, R. (2005)

What is Throwaways and Runaway?

According to Colbi (2011) The traditional American dream of owning a home, obtaining a college education, and working at a good, paying job is only that, a dream, for scores of homeless youth in America today. There is a growing street population of young people who have been thrown out of their homes by their caretakers or their families, and who face life-threatening situations each day. For these youth, the furthest thing in their lives is reaching the so-called “American Dream;” and their most immediate need is survival, simply living out the day in front of them. 

Currently, on anglophone countries Runaways and Throwaways is a growing trouble. In America and Europe there some help's programs to try to avoid those cases. An example of this, is Homeless Youth. They're have branches in many parts of the world, one of them is Latin America (see the video)

Sometimes those programs help people and then, they record them to look at the change of their friends. An example is Perry's Story (see the video)

Runaways and throwaways are most vulnerable to falling prey to the sex trade, selling drugs, or being lured into human trafficking, and some steal or panhandle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdAwMCSEu1M  -  Perry's story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjqBW_422w   -  Homeless youth in Latin America


Source:
-Fernandes A. Runaway and Homeless Youth: Demographics, Programs, and Emerging Issues. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service; 2007.

-U.S. Department of Education. Education for homeless children and youth program: title VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, non-regulatory guidance. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education; 2004.