Moving Out, Moving On

Young People's Pathways In and Through Homelessness

Shelley Mallett, Doreen Rosenthal, Deb Keys, Roger Averill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415470308
• eBook ISBN: 9781135188801
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Based on rich interview data drawn from a large scale longitudinal study of homeless young people, this book examines the personal, familial and structural factors that impact on homeless young people's long-term outcomes. While telling the personal stories of young people's experiences, the book refers to the wider research and policy literature on youth homelessness, engaging with key debates about the causes and meanings of homelessness in western societies. The book addresses important issues such as employment and education, engagement with services, social support, connection to family and friends, as well as personal factors including physical and mental health, sexual practices and drug use.

Homeless young people are typically portrayed as leading chaotic, risky lives, trapped in a downward spiral of drug use, mental and other health problems, and long-term homelessness. By giving voice to young homeless people, this book challenges this stereotype and demonstrates young people's capacity to move out of homelessness and make satisfactory lives for themselves.

Research findings are positioned in the context of a broad, international literature on youth homelessness and is important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology, sociology, youth and social work as well as researchers, policy makers and service providers in all western cultures.

1
Introduction

I wouldn’t change what’s happened now, being honest, everything’s happened to me for a reason, and I’ve learnt to deal with it now… learning to persevere has been the hardest thing to do, to keep my head held high and know that I am someone important and I have just as much to offer to everyone as a normal child who has come through a normal house with normal parents.

(Imogen)

Homeless young people are typically portrayed as leading chaotic, risky lives, trapped in a downward spiral of drug use, mental and other health problems, and long-term homelessness. In this book, based on a longitudinal study conducted in Melbourne, Australia, called Project i, we challenge this stereotype through an examination of young people’s pathways into and through homelessness. We describe the complexity of their pathways and identify the factors that make a difference to their lives and especially their capacity to exit homelessness. Remarkably, at the end of two years many young people in our study had found a secure home base. However, others were still grappling with structural, familial and personal impediments that left them unable to shift from their marginalized circumstances.

In asking who becomes homeless and why, we recognize that homelessness affects young people from many backgrounds and diverse experiences. We look at the reasons why young people leave home, their experiences while homeless, and their long-term outcomes. We take note of the structural factors that create environments in which homelessness occurs and is accepted. The book focuses on what happens to young people when they become homeless, what they do to get by, who they relate to and how all these, together, impact on their long-term outcomes. We take account of issues such as employment and education, engagement with services, social support, connection to family and friends, as well as personal factors including physical and mental health and drug use.

To answer our questions, we use extensive survey data but, importantly, give voice to young people through interviews that allow them to frame their experiences in their own words. Some young people told us stories that highlight escape from abusive or chaotic homes; others told positive stories about a journey towards a better understanding of themselves—and sometimes their families. The stories remind us that although many young people experiencing homelessness act in ways that put their health and well-being at risk, the vast majority of them survive. More than this, many discover a positive way forward for their lives. As Emma puts it at the end of her interview, ‘I’m surprised I never died. I’m here. I’m off the drugs and my life’s worth living.’

Who are homeless?

As we discuss in Chapter 2, multiple definitions of homelessness exist, ranging from a literal view that people are homeless only when they lack shelter, that is, ‘rooflessness’, to broader definitions that include those who have unstable or substandard forms of shelter. This latter approach may include, as a key criterion, a person’s experience of the adequacy of their housing. One of the other key ways to understand homelessness is in relation to the meaning of home. For young people, home does not only mean a physical place; it is understood as a place where one feels connected, wanted and supported. Young people emphasized similar issues in their definitions of homelessness. Most understood it as much more than an absence of shelter; to be homeless is also the absence of caring, love or belonging (Crane and Brannock, 1996).

The way in which we define homelessness is important for many purposes, from specifying boundaries or criteria for development of policy and the provision of services to recruiting participants into research projects (Neil and Fopp, 1992; Crane and Brannock, 1996). Equally, definitions of homelessness impact directly on how we perceive the extent of this population.

How many homeless young people?

A range of data sources is used to estimate the number of homeless young people in any given location. These include point-in-time census data and survey data, and routinely collected service delivery data from services and agencies, such as homelessness services and government income providers. In Australia, service delivery data can provide alternative measures to census data by assessing the numbers of young people who receive assistance from relevant services and agencies and who are thus considered homeless. One issue with these types of data is that they only include those who received support from the service or agency and not those who were declined assistance or who did not seek support. Hence, there are likely to be underestimates.

Differences in data sources, together with differing definitions of homelessness and the dynamic nature of homelessness, mean that accurate numbers of young people experiencing homelessness cannot be determined and it is not possible to make meaningful comparisons of the prevalence of homelessness between countries. It is generally recognized that there exists a hidden population of youth experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness who do not access youth homelessness services and may not be captured in census data, a commonly used index of prevalence. Furthermore, in the USA, a distinction is made between homeless and runaway youth, although it is recognized that both groups of young people share similar experiences and vulnerabilities and indeed overlap.

The difficulties in precisely defining homelessness and thus obtaining accurate figures about the extent of this problem are highlighted by the conflicting data emerging from some western countries. A UK-wide review of youth homelessness found that the number of young people ‘accepted as homeless’ had remained constant over the last decade in Scotland and Northern Ireland; however, it had fallen in England and Wales (Quilgars et al., 2008). Similar decreases have been shown in Dublin (Maycock et al., 2008) and in Australia (Chamberlain and Mackenzie, 2008).

Leading risky lives?

Most of the research with homeless youth has concentrated on the difficulties and problems associated with homelessness. Key areas of concern include drug and alcohol use, physical and mental health, sexual practices and sexual health and violence and victimization. Young people who are homeless do have poorer health and well-being, higher levels of substance use and are at greater risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and experiencing victimization. Understanding these risks and dangers associated with homelessness is a fundamental step in supporting young people who find themselves without a home. However, as Zerger et al. (2008) acknowledge, the research tends to focus on individual-level risk and protective factors which ‘detracts from the structural issues that have shaped these individuals’ experiences in the first place and are key to resolving them’ (Zerger et al., 2008:824). A focus on individual risk behaviours can not only preclude attention being directed to the structural factors that contribute to homelessness, but also result in youth being defined in terms of personal deficiencies (Bender et al., 2007). Recent research on social supports is part of a wider shift of emphasis to a consideration of how young people survive and protect themselves on the street and how they move out of homelessness. It is important to note that most research is cross-sectional in nature, or at best follows young people’s lives for short periods of time. Given the fluid nature of homelessness, even pathways approaches as currently employed can only illuminate relatively short periods in the lives of young people who experience homelessness. We cannot assume their situations at the close of the research periods will remain static, whether they are homeless or in homes.

Why leave home?

The many and diverse reasons given by young people for leaving home are usually couched in ‘crisis’ terms. Family environment is a major theme, generally described in terms of family conflict (see, for example, Ennett et al., 1999; Ringwalt et al., 1998), or sexual, physical or emotional abuse by family members (Ennett et al., 1999; Lanyon et al., 1999; Pears and Noller, 1995; Rew et al., 2001; Rotheram-Borus et al., 1996a; Whitbeck et al., 1997a; Whitbeck and Simons, 1993).

Other reasons for leaving home appear less consistently. These include: personal drug use; school problems; sexual identity; neglect; drug or alcohol problems of a family member; family structure; family housing instability; and traumatic life events, for example, the death of a parent (de Man et al., 1993; Rew et al., 2001; Ringwalt et al., 1998; Weiner and Pollack, 1997; Whitbeck and Simons, 1993). A handful of studies have reported personal drug use as a reason young people leave home, with the percentage of users citing this as a reason ranging from 9 per cent to 37 per cent (Rew et al., 2001). This is interesting given the high rates of reported drug use among this population, estimated to be almost three to four times more prevalent than among non-homeless young people (Bailey et al., 1998; Baron, 1999). These findings beg the question of which comes first, drug use or homelessness. We investigated this issue in a brief qualitative interview with more than 300 homeless young people who were part of our longitudinal study. We found some left home because of their own or parents’ drug use, usually associated with conflict, whereas others initiated drug use after they became homeless. These findings highlight the importance of taking more than a single snapshot of young people’s experiences, but rather following these experiences over time (Mallett et al., 2005).

Some US researchers have described young people as ‘running from’ fractured and turbulent homes. This has been contrasted with reasons associated with ‘running to’, reported by a small minority of young people who initially leave home to assert independence, escape boredom, seek excitement or because of the allure of the street (Ennett et al., 1999; Whitbeck and Simons, 1993). Whereas US studies emphasize the behaviour of the young people in family conflict, some British studies have gone beyond this to focus on family type and its impact on home leaving. For example, Smith et al. (1998) found that young people experiencing homelessness in London, came from two broad family types. Those who left stable families/stepfamilies were likely to have left because of their own practices—drugs, crime and/ or choice of boyfriends. In contrast, young people who had left disrupted families with a history of separation, family breakdown and recent stepparenting relationships were most likely to have left due to conflict.

Information about the reasons Australian young people leave home is based to a large extent on small-scale, service-initiated studies but is consistent with other literature in representing young people as ‘running from’ problematic family environments (see, for example, Lanyon et al., 1999; Powers et al., 1989; Robson, 1992). In our own work we have shown conflict with parents to be the most important reason for leaving, but a substantial number of young people nominated their desire for independence and/or adventure as the main impetus for leaving home (Rosenthal et al., 2006).

Most studies—Australian and international—provide a list of the ‘main’ reasons why young people leave home. While this alerts us to the range of issues faced by this population, it does not allow us to assess possible relationships between the individual and structural factors that lead to homelessness. Most importantly, these studies are not framed within a broader understanding of the experiences which lead to homelessness among young people. Nor do they clarify how these experiences are implicated in young people’s pathways through homelessness.

How the book is structured

In Chapter 2 we introduce debates about what is meant by homelessness and the causal factors, both structural and individual, that lead to homelessness. We describe the use of pathways analysis to depict young people’s journeys into and through homelessness. Chapter 3 briefly describes the research and explains how we derived four pathways through homelessness, based on accommodation type and stability, through the use of stories told about the experiences of 40 young people interviewed 18 months after their recruitment into the study. Key characteristics of each pathway and its members are described. In Chapter 4, we focus on these young people’s entry into homelessness, and examine key reasons given by members of the four pathways for leaving home, noting similarities and differences between these pathway members.

The next four chapters each provide an account of one of the four identified pathways through homelessness. In Chapter 5, we describe a group of highly vulnerable young people who predominantly came from troubled and abusive families and who remained in unstable, street-based circumstances. Chapter 6 tells of a group of young people whose pathway is characterized by sustained links with services. Unlike the first group, these young people had a clear and positive view of their futures, which included completing education and finding employment. The third group, described in Chapter 7, had moved in and out of home. Having left home at a time of intolerable stress and conflict, these young people nevertheless maintained their social networks and retained positive relationships with their parents. Chapter 8 tells of the group—the majority of our participants—who went ‘home’ after brief periods of homelessness. These young people came from homes that were relatively stable and had few drug-related or mental health problems themselves. The most distinctive feature of this group was their sense of agency, of personal direction and purpose.

Our final chapter gathers together this material and critically examines the impact of individual characteristics and structural features of young people’s environments. We consider the implications of our findings for the conceptual underpinnings of homelessness policy and service delivery, taking account of the specific needs associated with each of the four pathways. In particular, we emphasize interdependence as a framing idea rather than the pursuit of independence and self-reliance commonly seen as a normative trajectory for adolescents.

2
Youth homelessness in context

The main problem was just wondering why people didn’t want me, just like, blaming myself for things that were happening in my life that were completely not under my control. I haven’t done anything to cause this, it’s just something that’s happened. I’d been dealt a bad poker hand. Some get lucky and some don’t and that’s all there is to it.

(Imogen)

Our understandings of the terms ‘youth’, ‘young people’, ‘homelessness’ and ‘youth homelessness’ are framed by the social context and discourses in which they...

Table of contents

• Adolescence and Society
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Youth homelessness in context
• 3 Participation and pathways
• 4 Becoming homeless
• 5 On the streets
• 6 Using the system
• 7 In and out of home
• 8 Going home
• 9 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index