[High School English] Essay

Early Intervention: The Solution to Youth Homelessness

The battle against youth homelessness has been long and challenging. It is one that has united organizations and thousands of homeless youth to fight for changes in laws and increase funding to programs they deem valuable in their efforts to end homelessness. It’s a tactic that has worked and led to the creation, expansion and improvement of many programs that are now available to homeless youth. And yet the numbers have only worsened. Thousands of youth are still here on the streets with no progress in sight; bouncing from shelter to shelter, sleeping at a park or under a bridge, and struggling to find food and warmth. This is a very complex issue resulting from multitude of other issues that, in some cases, affect the general population. Therefore, it is difficult to assign the blame to a particular problem that can realistically be resolved. Fortunately, there have been studies and we now have a collection of data that show us the main causes of youth homelessness. In this article, I will focus on the lack of early intervention. More specifically, the importance of prevention and early intervention through outreach in high schools.

Consider this for a moment. Life is nothing but a map of a series of points that have deep, and sometimes, unrecognizable connections. Each point represents a time, a place, an experience, a person, and so-on. Homelessness is there on that map, and it is one you may have to visit. Many youth including myself are here right now and more will soon come. Some to stay for a moment, a month, a year, or a decade. For others, it’s their last straw, a last stop towards a feeling of anger and frustration that either leads to an increased willingness to fight, or loss of hope and motivation to continue. Coming to this feeling or point is by no means an accident. More so an accident of birth to the wrong parents, family, race, neighborhood, body, or sexual and gender identity. It’s a process. The aggregate of our joy and suffering. Every name, every beating by a parent, every touch by an uncle, every punch by a bully, every cry for help, every laugh and mocking, every happy moment, every death of a loved one, led us to this point. There is perhaps no better way to understand youth homelessness than to look at it from this perspective. To me, it demonstrates the complexity of a personal issue and highlights the importance of early intervention in our efforts to end it.

Consider that map again. The goal is to stop youth from reaching that point (homelessness) on the map. The solution: build more points that will block and redirect them to a better place in life. An example, provide rental assistance to individuals experiencing financial difficulties. This is one of the early prevention programs currently available in Seattle. My idea for an even more effective intervention strategy is start as early as high school. There aren’t any programs, as far as I’ve known both as a student and homeless youth, which have a sole purpose to reach out to high school students that will most likely end up on the streets. My solution to this issue is to involve counselors and other students at these schools to offer support, build relationships, and share information about resources and programs. First and foremost, there has to be an agreement on the factors that contribute to youth homelessness. Poverty, racial inequality, foster care, drugs, sexual and gender identity are the major players. Second, we need to identify areas in the state where we know these issues are prevalent. It is important to consider more than one issue when narrowing down the areas to prioritize. Next, identify high schools with low graduation rates, students from low income or low education family background, and those who would be first generation college students. These are the characteristics of a place that fosters homelessness. It’s one that I’ve lived in. It is also one that needs outside intervention. In many cases, it’s the only way to avert another youth from ending on the streets.

The one narrative I hear from other homeless youth, and one that I could relate to, is that when you are experiencing difficulties outside of school it becomes challenging to be part of the school. It’s hard to make friends, to join a club, to participate in class, or to take school seriously. At times, the school is a place where there are even more problems. Sometimes, it might get so overwhelming that students will find it easier to drop out. This is where the intervention needs to happen. We must reach out to these youth and offer them a support they won’t get anywhere else.

There are currently resources and programs for underprivileged youth that many are not informed about. My solution is to make it a standard practice for counselors to talk about available resources with every student regardless of their status, and provide them information on how to access them. It would also be extremely helpful if we went step further and created an additional counselor that only focused on students that are struggling academically and may not be taking advantage of the resources or may need more support.

Another solution is to have student outreach. That is to create a club with students at risk of becoming homeless. The club must have a well-paid leader from outside the school; someone with firsthand experience of youth homelessness and a job history that involves working with teenagers. The purpose of the club is to educate the school and general public about youth homelessness. They will also reach out to vulnerable students and direct them to programs and resources, offer them leadership roles, and give them a chance to build a support system.

The club will bring awareness through community speaking events, presentations at school assemblies, talking with students during their study hall or lunch period, or maybe even produce a short video documentary to share with the entire school. These intervention strategies will not only work for many students, but it will also give them an opportunity to share their stories and build a support system around people who understand their struggles. This would be a point on that map. A point that was nonexistent in my story and one that gets even more difficult to build on the streets. But one that is necessary in our fight against youth homeless.

I offer these solutions based on my personal experiences in high school and now as homeless youth. I understand the struggles many youth have had endure. I understand the feeling of disconnection from the entire world and the lack of anyone home or outside reaching out to you and showing the least bit of care. Homelessness is a lot more than just being without a house. It is the ending of a story that begins somewhere. Fortunately for a lot of youth, the direction of this story can be changed. We cannot change their history, but we can change their value of life and outlook on their futures. We can surely prevent many of them from ending up on the streets.

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