Resilience in Youth Homelessness
Homelessness is a issue that is closer to any given person more than one may think, this is especially true when it comes to the youth in any given area whether it be due to family issues, financial struggles, mental health or substance abuse, it is an unfortunate reality that many young people face especially in metropolitan areas. However, many of these young people adapt to the conditions and develop a resilience to homelessness. A study from November 2024, From Coping to Resilience: How Youth with Lived Experience of Homelessness Cope with Stressful Experiences, explores how many of these young people dealing with homelessness adapt and overcome their challenges, and how they build resilience through qualitative narratives through a randomized trial on Housing First for Youth.
Key Findings of the Study
Throughout the study, it was found that youth rely on several coping mechanisms to build and maintain resilience, some of which include:
- Creating barriers and rebuilding relationships: A big problem that homeless youth face is unhealthy relationships with family, and this can be an underlying factor of why they are in the situation they are in, of course removing themselves from that environment in the first place may be the best thing to do at the time. They later on start to rebuild healthy relationships with people when they feel they are ready.
- Engaging with community support: Youth that go out of their way to access community services such as shelters and contact social workers/services have reported more resilience through positive coping mechanisms and better at being able to adapt to their living situation.
- Emotional regulation and developing personal agency: Many, not all youth struggle with some sort of emotional irregularities, whether this be anger issues or compulsive actions, but as time goes on, their ability to regulate emotions increases. This creates a better system for them to cope with stress
Why Does This Issue Matter?
For current and future social workers, it is necessary to understand youth homelessness and the resilience that is needed in these situations as a social worker, you are more than likely to come across one of these situations in your career, and learning about it can set you up with necessary skills to provide support for those in need. Through learning about what can be done to provide support, what can be done to prevent these issues from happening in the first place can also be set in place, with things such as community support programs, access to mental health programs, and stable alternative housing.
What Can You Do To Help?
There are several things that anybody in the community can do, regardless of what area you live in or how many youth are affected in your immediate area. Some of the ways that you can help include supporting local shelters and youth programs, advocating for policies that directly positively affect the youth, and simply educating others, whether your friends or the general public on these types of issues, raising awareness. If youth homelessness is not an immediate, critical issue in your neighborhood, you can always go to communities where this is a more prominent issue and help out there any way you can.
Understanding what factors go into youth homelessness, we can better understand what steps can be put in place to prevent it from happening in the first place. The article is a call out to social workers, policymakers, and communities where youth homelessness is prevalent to offer more support and programs for those in need.