11 Good Practices on the Integration of Youth Work in Services for Youth Homelessness
The experiences of, reasons for and routes out of homelessness among young people are often different from those of adults. It is therefore necessary to adopt youth-orientated interventions which consider the transition into adulthood to be as important as to that into independent housing. This requires a mindset shift: rather than being a homeless service that works with young people, the starting point is being a youth service where young people happen to be experiencing homelessness.
Youth work might prove a useful tool in this regard, since it provides a framework to make sure services are adapted to the specificities of young people, by recognising their needs in a way that empowers them.
In this collection of good practices, readers will find a diversity of examples from across Europe which support young people experiencing homelessness in different ways: some are youth services, while others are homelessness services, some provide more intensive care, others focus on prevention, etc. However, all of them integrate in one way or another interventions and/or principles rooted in youth work, which can be of inspiration for other organisations working on youth homelessness.