What Are We Doing To Help Homeless Youths?
When you think about Homelessness, most likely youths and families don't come to mind first. I'm hoping this article will change your way of thinking.
Erin Ryan works with homeless youths at The Night Ministry so she knows all about this issue. Before that she spent 15 years as the Executive Director at the Lincoln Park Community Shelter. I knew months ago that I wanted to talk about this problem and I asked her if she would write a guest blog. As usual she came through and saved me months of research and therapy.
Thanks to Erin and I hope after reading this, the problem of youth homelessness will be on your radar.
You may already know a little bit about homelessness; you certainly know that it is a pervasive problem in our country that affects hundreds of thousands of people each year and that its main causes are rooted in poverty (unemployment, lack of affordable housing) and exacerbated by personal issues such as medical and mental health problems, substance abuse, or family disruptions.
But what is your picture of a typical homeless person? Is it an adult, sitting solitary on a park bench or begging for change on a downtown corner? Would it surprise you to know that the majority of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. are families with children? Or that an alarming number of teenagers are becoming homeless on their own, without adult support?
Here is some background information about the problem in Chicago: By some estimates, there are over 138,000 people who experience homelessness in our city in a given year. Of these, over 12,000 are between the ages of 14-21, on their own without a parent or other adult guardian.
These young people are more likely to be newly homeless, highly likely to drop out of school, and are almost always fleeing traumatic abuse or family rejection (up to 40% are LGBTQ). About a third are pregnant or parenting themselves. For more information about youth homelessness check out these 11 facts.
The Night Ministry has chosen to focus a large part of its work on youth homelessness, precisely because they are some of the most easily preyed upon, the most often ignored and forgotten, and the need is growing. There are currently only 360 beds in Chicago for homeless youth, and The Night Ministry operates 53 of them. (Read more about our Youth Programs here.)
In each of our programs, we focus on providing basic services (like food, shelter, medical care) while connecting youth to longer-term resources (like primary care, education, employment, and long-term housing), so that they can begin to rebuild their lives.
When speaking about homelessness, too often we focus on all that people are lacking – access to health care, social services, supportive friends or family, income or employment, and most of all, safe and stable housing. But at The Night Ministry, we prefer to focus instead on the unique strengths and assets of each person that we encounter.
By helping each young person tap into their unique strengths, we build strong relationships and connections – a web of support – that enables them to move beyond the immediacy of the present crisis and start to focus on long-term solutions for the future. Our focus on human connection, relationship building, and fine-tuning each young person’s strengths is what makes our programs unique and what makes us a leader in the field.
Our staff can attest that the young people we serve have remarkable resiliency, resourcefulness, tenacity, and creativity. They often work several jobs and survive on little sleep. They have very few possessions but find ways to make few things go far. They are amazing advocates for themselves and for others. They have incredible generosity, often forgoing what they need the most – food, supplies, a bed for the night – to someone who needs it even more.
“My main interest is to empower young people to advocate for themselves, because no one can have people understand a struggle like the person in the struggle can.”
We are inspired every day by the young people we serve, and their strengths – Resilience, Resourcefulness, and Tenacity – not only help them survive, but drive our efforts to help them thrive.
Resources about Youth Homelessness:
http://nationalhomeless.org/issues/youth/
http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/youth
http://usich.gov/population/youth
http://www.chicagohomeless.org/programs-campaigns/advocacy-public-policy/no-youth-alone/
This is another piece in a year long series focusing on The Face Of Homelessness. You can read the entire series by clicking on the link
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