One of the things I’ve been really struck by during my travels is the range of ways that young people with lived experience of homelessness are making their voices heard across the system of homelessness strategic planning and service provision.
Every service delivery organisation I’ve visited has a young persons’ group whose role is to provide feedback and challenge on the services they and other young people receive. As well as feeding back on existing services, young people’s views have been sought on pilots such as Homeward Trust’s pilot of youth Housing First, now a fully-fledged programme. Young people were clear that youth Housing First in Edmonton should be targeted as a prevention and early intervention programme, rather than at young people with the greatest needs.
Young people are also influencing thinking on youth homelessness at a system level within communities. A Way Home Kamloops’ Youth Against Youth Homelessness group formed as an essential part of developing the city’s plan to end youth homelessness. The group were supported to undertake research and consultation through focus groups and interviews and to influence the development of the plan itself.
In California, I met with representatives of two organisations that are all about youth voice at a state level. The California Homeless Youth Project is ‘a research and policy initiative that highlights the issues and challenges faced by unaccompanied young people who are homeless or lack stable housing’. Through video and other mechanisms, the voices of youth describe their experiences and articulate recommendations for policy change.
The Homeless Youth Project works closely with the California Coalition for Youth whose mission is ‘to improve and empower the lives of California Youth’. The Coalition provides strong statewide policy leadership on disconnected runaway and homeless youth. Their crisis line provides an invaluable source of information about the issues that young people are facing and regular opportunities are provided for young people who have experienced homelessness to meet face to face with politicians and policy makers. In October 2017, the Coalition presented a call to action to prevent and end youth homelessness in California with costed recommendations on:
- prevention and early intervention support systems
- low barrier and diverse housing opportunities
- post housing and follow-up services
- an Office of Homeless Youth and Young Adults
I’m at an early stage of learning about the structures and groups in place in Canada. I’ll be learning an immense amount over the next three days, at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness conference. The programme features a number of youth voice sessions, resonant of Cymorth Cymru’s ‘experts by experience’ slots at their seminars and other events.
A relatively recent development at a national level in America is the National Youth Forum on Homelessness supported by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the True Colours Fund. The Forum aims to ‘create youth-led change in the national response to end youth homelessness’. An example of their work is their influence of HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Programme. The Programme was developed with the help of the Forum and the group also played a key role in assessing applications and will help guide the technical assistance that will be provided to the 10 communities. HUD state that the involvement of young people ‘profoundly shaped the demonstration programme’.
I would love to see the development of such a group in Wales; young people with lived experience of homelessness influencing strategy, policy and funding decisions at a national level. I’ve got an ideal opportunity to feed in my learning to the work of End Youth Homelessness Cymru who, over the coming months, will be developing a 10 year plan to end youth homelessness across Wales.
Making Youth Homelessness Everybody's Business 