Youth Transitions Study (YTS)
Youth homelessness remains a complex and challenging issue in Canada with over 35,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 24 experiencing homelessness every year. Current approaches to addressing the problem, which typically involve emergency services and time-limited support, have left young people vulnerable and exposed to further trauma, criminal exploitation, poor health, and social and economic exclusion. Although we have heard much from youth who experience homelessness about their experiences, we know much less about the factors that are likely to prevent youth homelessness, especially among youth involved with Child Welfare and Community Services (CWCS), a group that frequently graduate from services into precarious living situations.
Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Solutions Impact Accelerator (MtS) is a partnership of networks and centres of excellence that is transforming how we respond to youth homelessness in Canada – affecting a shift from emergency services to a strategic and coordinated system of solutions grounded in preventing and ending youth homelessness through housing stabilization.
About the Project
As a part of the MtS research network, the Youth Transitions Study (YTS) is a longitudinal mixed-methods study led by Dr Michael Ungar at the Resilience Research Centre, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The study is also supported through partnerships with the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, the Child Welfare League of Canada, and Phoenix Centre for Youth.
Despite efforts to support transitions out of the care for young people who have had contact with CWCS, many of these youth experience periods of homelessness and other related forms of vulnerability. Few studies, however, have followed a large cohort of young people through the transition from CWCS to identify the psychological, institutional, social, educational and political/policy aspects of young people’s lives that put them at risk of homelessness and those that enhance their resilience, including housing stability and engagement in school or work.
YTS aims to identify the key risk and protective factors in the lives of young people who have had contact with CWCS to improve their long-term outcomes. The study is unique in several ways. First, it is following almost 300 young people receiving services to discover what happens during their journey through services that predicts stable or precarious housing later in life. Second, the study is not just focused on homelessness, but is also looking for the preventive and promotive factors that help children receiving services succeed.
This study is using multiple methods to engage youth including qualitative in-depth interviews and a longitudinal survey over three years. The study involves young people between the ages of 14 and 18 residing in Nova Scotia who are receiving all forms of CWCS services, including those in permanent care and custody, temporary care, agreements, alternative family care, and youth services. In doing so, we are exploring the nuanced pathways that young people travel as they navigate their way through services and supervision to independence and success.
Finding Our Way Home
A Collaborative Photovoice Research Project with Young People from the Halifax Regional Municipality who have 'Aged out' of Care and Experienced Homelessness
The Finding Our Way Home research project, supported by Dr. Melanie Doucet (Project Design & Supervisor, Adjunct Professor, McGill University School of Social Work) and Elizabeth Clark (Research Coordinator, PhD Student, Dalhousie University), is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) Photovoice study conducted in collaboration with eight young people (ages 19-26) who have ‘aged out’ of care and experienced homelessness in the Halifax Regional Municipality. The project showcases the lived expertise of the youth co-researchers through powerful images and accompanying captions, as well as concrete recommendations for child welfare policy, practice and supports. The project aimed to identify pathways and processes of systemic exclusion which put young people with histories of child welfare system involvement more at risk of homelessness than other young people. This project is part of the larger Youth in Transition Study and is meant to supplement the findings. Findings provide a nuanced explanation of both the risk and protective factors that influence young people’s trajectories from the child welfare system to (and out of) homelessness.
In the Media
PUBLICATIONS
Youth Receiving Child Welfare Services and their Preferred Relationships with their Service Providers
The Mediating Role of Resilience and Living in Care on Psychosocial Outcomes
Finding Our Way Home- Research Report
Finding Our Way Home- Photo eBook
