Imagine navigating through every day of your life, but everything feels off. It’s like you walk into your home, but someone moved all the furniture in your house two inches to the left. You’re called by a name, but you just know it as a sound that you know to respond to. None of the phonetic noises you get called by sound right, like hitting a foul key while playing piano. You are piloting a sack of flesh and bone, but it doesn’t feel like it’s your own. The parts look and feel wrong, like they should not be there. Living with the feeling of alienation not only from one’s own body, but from others around them. For many, this is a harsh and very true reality that they have to deal with on a day to day basis. Millions of people in the U.S. alone …show more content…
Many of these youths are victims of parental abuse, substance abuse, and have mental and/or physical health problems (Cochran et al 2002). Nearly 60% of homeless youth left home because of family conflict, 48.5% left home because of difficulty with a family member, and 14.3% left because of conflict with a family member over sexual orientation. LGBT youths experienced higher rates of physical victimization than their non-LGBT counterparts. LGBT youths had an average of 7.4 more perpetrators of sexual victimization than non-LGBT counterparts and LGBT youths have a higher rate of depressive symptoms. "[LGBT] homeless adolescents experience not only the vulnerabilities, daily difficulties, and survival challenges of living on the street but also the discrimination faced by [LGBT] youth in general," (Cochran et al 2002) meaning, in comparison to their non-LGBT counterparts, homeless LGBT youths have to face the struggles the go along with being homeless but also the struggles of being part of the LGBT community added onto that. In order to cope with the stress that goes hand in hand with this, many turn to substance abuse. When LGBT youth come to terms with their orientation or identity in context with their family, friends, or peers, they are "facing risks of isolation, rejection, and sometimes victimization by others" (Cochran et al 2002). When coming to terms with this while homeless, there are no such networks for potential support available to these youths. Cochran et al (2002) discussed further how homelessness is something that should be prevented as much as possible for LGBT youth. It was recommended that families involved go to therapy to help them come to terms with and accept their child. They also stated that community health programs should recognize that these youth are at higher risks and should assist them, and that overall there
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html>. Johnson, Regina Jones, Lynn Rew, and R. Weylin Sternglanz. " The relationship between childhood sexual abuse and sexual health practices of homeless adolescents/Adolescense." BNET - The CBS Interactive Business Network. Adolescence, 22 June 2006.
Youth become homeless for a number of reasons, including: family violence and neglect, rejection due to sexual orientation or gender identity, the overwhelmed child welfare system and extreme poverty. These youth almost always have experienced unimaginable abuse and trauma, in their homes, their communities, and on the street. It is the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA)-funded services and programs that help to rectify the deep injustices that homeless youth experience on a daily basis.
Giffords, E., Alonso, C., & Bell, R. (2007). A Transitional Living Program for Homeless Adolescents: A Case Study. Child & Youth Care Forum, 36(4), 141-151. doi:10.1007/s10566-007-9036-0.
The perspectives from transgender youth is critically missing in many discussion, research, intervention and implementation strategies. Transgender youth, are misunderstood, misrepresented and excluded from conversations, decision making, and policy execution when in actuality they should be involved. Shelton & Bond (2017) elucidates that although there is a growing body of research that examines LGBTQ youth homelessness, gaps in knowledge about the specific experiences of transgender and gender-expansive homeless youth remain. Studies focus largely on transgender youth in the context of the methods and measures in studies. Hence, including transgender youth within research on sexual minorities, rather than allowing them a distinct category of inquiry, can replicate the common misreading of transgender people as
Even with the daily struggle faced by youth in obtaining shelter and homelessness becoming a reality for a growing number of Canadians, Canada, with its high quality of life is one country that has always had a global long-standing reputation. This paper will be working towards giving the reader a better understanding with regards to homeless youth. It will be focusing on the reasons why they leave home, their lives on the street and steps they are trying to take to be able to leave the streets. An important finding from this research suggests, “the street youth population is diverse, complex, and heterogeneous”. According to Karabanow, made up of a number of subcultures including hardcore street-entrenched young people, squatters, group home kids, child welfare kids, soft-core twinkles, runaways, throwaways, refugees and immigrants is the generic term ‘street youth’.
If you wanted to examine young people's experiences of homelessness, would you use qualitative methods, or quantitative methods, or a mixed methods approach, and why?
Hudson, Angela L., and Karabi Nandy. "Comparisons of Substance Abuse, High-risk Sexual Behavior and Depressive Symptons Among Homeless youth with and without a History of Foster Care Placement." EBSCOhost. EBSCO, Oct 2012. Web.11 Dec.2013.
The youth homelessness population is increasing because of the many challenges that these children or teens face in everyday life; It also continues getting larger every year because of the many youth who are getting into dangerous situations that force them to be homeless or thru their own choosing. One third of the homeless population is between the ages of 16-24, which is incredibly young and it is the prime years for an adolescent or young adu...
Throughout the course of my 10-week study, I observed approximately 20 youths aged 13-17. In order to be admitted to the shelter, youths must be “in crisis,” characterized by “behaviors or a history indicative of SED [serious emotional disturbance], experiencing signif...
teens. Family conflict is the most common cause of all youth homelessness. For gay and
The majority of the population believes that they're to blame for being homeless but the truth is that most of them are victims. Some suffer from childhood abuse or violence. Nearly one quarter are children. Many have lost their jobs an...
O., & Burke, P. J. (2009). Lost in the shuffle: culture of homeless adolescents. Pediatric Nursing, 35(3), 154-161.
Kryder-Coe, J., Salamon, L.M. & Molnar, J.M. (1991). Homeless Children and Youth. New Brunswick, NJ: The Transaction Publishers.
According to the national center on family homelessness, many students who are homeless lack the school supplies that are core and they also lack an environment that is comfortable to do their homework. Also, in the lives of homeless students, violence can often play a significant role because according to the study, almost 25% of children have witnessed violence in their homes. There is a very high likelihood of children who have seen the violence exhibit antisocial behavior, anxiety and high levels of depression when compared to those who have
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (2017) reports that 553,742 people spend the night without a home, which is a 1% increase from 2016 to 2017. Of these, 21% were children under the age of 18 (The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2017). Homeless youth, when compared to housed youth, are at an increased risk of participating in risky sexual behavior (Kennedy, Tucker, Green, Golinelli, & Ewing, 2012). Risky sexual behavior is defined as sexual behavior at a young age, sexual acts with multiple partners, participating in unprotected sex, and sexual behavior while under the influence of alcohol or illicit drugs (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Risky sexual behaviors can have profound effects on the lives of those who participate in said behaviors including, but not limited to an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STI) and unplanned pregnancy (Kennedy, et al., 2012).