YOUTH AS TRUTH-TELLERS AND RIGHTS-HOLDERS: LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS TO ENABLE YOUTH HOUSING SECURITY
Abstract
In the first pan-Canadian study on youth homelessness, 57.8% of youth reported prior involvement with child protection services. Indeed, transitions from government institutions (e.g., child/youth protection, inpatient mental health treatment, the youth justice system) represent common pathways into homelessness for youth across North America. This article examines young people’s experiences navigating youth protection services to identify institutional, legislative, and policy processes that pose problems for youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness, as well as processes that show promise for the promotion of the interests, protection, and well-being of youth. Our participatory youth research team explored homeless youth’s histories of involvement with youth protection services, seeking to clarify the sociolegal mechanisms in and beyond the youth protection system that make young people vulnerable to homelessness. Youth and adult co-researchers interviewed 38 individual youth (aged 16–29) who completed 64 qualitative institutional history interviews. According to our analysis, young people identified the following sociolegal practices as implicated in their experiences of homelessness: the use of totalizing institutions, the criminalization of runaways, the abrupt cessation of service delivery at 18 years of age, a systemic failure to view youth as rights-holders, and an overly complex emancipation process.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Ballucci, D. (2008). Risk in action: The practical effects of the youth management assessment. Socio-Legal Studies, 17(2), 175–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663908089610
Barker, B., Kerr, T., Alfred, G. T., Fortin, M., Nguyen, P., Wood, E., & DeBeck, K. (2014). High prevalence of exposure to the child welfare system among street-involved youth in a Canadian setting: Implications for policy and practice. BMC Public Health 14, art. 197. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-197
Britton, L. & Pilnik, L. (2018). Preventing homelessness for system-involved youth. Juvenile Family Court Journal, 69(1), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfcj.12107
Cairns, J. (2017). The myth of the age of entitlement: Millennials, austerity, and hope. University of Toronto Press.
Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (Eds.). (2010). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. Routledge.
Cheng, T., Wood, E., Feng, C., Mathias, S., Montaner, J., Kerr, T, & DeBeck, K. (2013). Transitions into and out of homelessness among street-involved youth in a Canadian setting. Health Place, 23, 122–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2013.06.003
Fine, M., Torre, M. E., Boudin, K., Bowen, I., Clark, J., Hylton, D., Martinez, M., Missy, Roberts, R. A., Smart, P., & Upegui, D. (2003). Participatory action research: Within and beyond bars. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes, & E. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design (pp. 173-198). American
Psychological Association. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/10595-010
Fowler, P. J., Toro, P. A., & Miles, B. W. (2009). Pathways to and from homelessness and associated psychological outcomes among adolescents leaving the foster care system. American Journal of Public Health, 99(8), 1453–1458. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2008.142547
Gaetz, S. A. (2014). Coming of age: Reimagining the response to youth homelessness in Canada. Homeless Hub. http://homelesshub.ca/comingofage
Government of Quebec, Youth Protection Act, CQLR c P-34.1, https://canlii.ca/t/557g4 retrieved on 2022-02-04.
Government of Quebec, Quebec Individual and Family Assistance Act, a-13.1.1, 2022. https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/a-13.1.1
Government of Quebec. (2021). Instaurer une société bienveillante pour nos enfants et nos jeunes: Rapport de la commission spéciale sur les droits des enfants et la protection de la jeunesse [Final report of the Laurent commission]. www.csdepj.gouv.qc.ca
Government of Quebec. (2023). Emancipation of the minor. https://www.quebec.ca/en/justice-and-civil-status/legal-protection/tutorship-property-minor/persons-involved/minor
Gaetz, S. (2014). Coming of age: Reimagining the response to youth homelessness in Canada. The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. https://www.homelesshub.ca/comingofage
Gaetz, S., O’Grady, B., Kidd, S., & Schwan, K. (2016). Without a home: The National Youth Homelessness Survey. Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. https://www.homelesshub.ca/YouthWithoutHome
Goyette, M., Bellot, C., Blanchet, A., & Silva-Ramirez, R. (2019). Youth leaving care, residential stability and instability and homelessness. Etude sur le devenir des jeunes placés (EDJEP), École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP), & La chaire de recherche sur l’évaluation des actions publiques à l’égard des jeunes et des populations vulnérables (CREVAJ). http://edjep.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Please-click-here-for-the-report.pdf
Goyette, M., Blanchet, A., & Bellot, C. (2019). The effect of placement instability on the transition to adulthood: Report from wave 1. Etude sur le devenir des jeunes placés (EDJEP), École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP), & La chaire de recherche sur l’évaluation des actions publiques à l’égard des jeunes et des populations vulnérables (CREVAJ). http://edjep.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/rapport_instabilite_eng.pdf
Gunawardena, N., & Stich, C. (2021). Interventions for young people aging out of the child welfare system: A systematic literature review. Children and Youth Services Review, 127, art. 106076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106076
Jasinski, J. L., Wesely, J. K., Wright, J. D., & Mustaine, E. E. (2010). Hard lives, mean streets: Violence in the lives of homeless women. Northeastern University Press.
Karabanow, J. (2004). Being young and homeless: Understanding how youth enter and exit street life. Peter Lang.
Leroux, L., Blanchet, A., Goyette, M., & Bouchard St-Amant, P.A. (2020). Les coûts de la sous-scolarisation des jeunes places. Rapport de la Étude sur le devenir des Jeunes Placés. http://edjep.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sous_scolarisation_FINAL.pdf
Lash, D. (2017). When the welfare people come: Race and class in the US child protection system. Haymarket.
Mouvement pour mettre fin à l’itinérance à Montréal. (2018). https://mmfim.ca/
Nelson, A. (2020). Nothing about us without us: Centering lived experience and revolutionary care in efforts to end and prevent homelessness in Canada. Radical Housing Journal, 2(2), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.54825/IMUC6661
Nichols, N. (2014). Youth work: An institutional ethnography of youth homelessness. University of Toronto Press.
Nichols, N. (2016). Coordination at the service delivery level: The development of a continuum of services for street-involved youth. In N. Nichols & C. Doberstein (Eds.), Exploring effective systems responses to homelessness (pp. 202–220). The Homeless Hub Press.
Nichols, N. (2019). Youth, school and community: Participatory institutional ethnographies. University of Toronto Press.
Nichols, N., & Ruglis, J. (2021). Institutional ethnography and youth participatory action research: A praxis approach. In P. C. Luken & S. Vaughn (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of institutional ethnography (pp. 527–550). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-1_27
Nichols, N., Schwan, K., Gaetz, S., Redman, M., French, D., Kidd, S., & O’Grady, W. (2017). Child welfare and youth homelessness in Canada: A proposal for action. Canadian Observatory on Homelessness and A Way Home Canada. https://www.homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/attachments/ChildWelfare-PolicyBrief-final.pdf
Prasad, C. S., Hall, A., & Thummuru, L. (2006). Engaging scientists through institutional histories [ILAC Brief 14]. Institutional Learning and Change, Bioversity International. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/52523/2/ILAC_Brief14_institutional.pdf
Rosenberg, R., & Youngmi, K. (2017). Aging out of foster care: Homelessness, post-secondary education, and employment. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 12(4), 99–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2017.1347551
Sauvé, C., Smith, C., Fawzi, A., Rose, T., Langille, J., Burkholder-Harris, K., & Kennelly, J. (2018). Building bridges: Perspectives on youth homelessness from First Nations, Inuit and Metis, Newcomer, and LGBTQ2S+ youth in Ottawa. https://homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/Building-Bridges.pdf
Smith, D. E. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. University of Toronto Press.
Statistics Canada. (2017). Census in brief: Young adults living with their parents in Canada in 2016 [Cat. no. 98-200-X2016008]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016008/98-200-x2016008-eng.cfm
Vaughan B. (2000). The government of youth: Disorder and dependence? Social & Legal Studies, 9(3), 347–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/096466390000900302
Authors contributing to the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Rights Granted After Publication
After publication, authors may reuse portions or the full article without obtaining formal permission for inclusion within their thesis or dissertation.
Permission for these reuses is granted on the following conditions:
- that full acknowledgement is made of the original publication stating the specific material reused [pages, figure numbers, etc.], [Title] by/edited by [Author/editor], [year of publication], reproduced by permission of International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies [link to IJCYFS website];
- In the case of joint-authored works, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from co-authors for the work to be reuse/republished;
- that reuse on personal websites and institutional or subject-based repositories includes a link to the work as published in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies; and that the material is not distributed under any kind of Open Access style licences (e.g. Creative Commons) which may affect the Licence between the author and IJCYFS.
