Preventing Youth Homelessness

In June 2017, the First Minster announced that he would ask the Wales Centre for Public Policy to contribute research on youth homelessness prevention. An international evidence review, and a supplementary report mapping interventions in Wales, form this contribution.

In the context of a global shift towards prevention, the international review identifies evidence-based interventions, promising practices, youth-identified prevention priorities, and intersecting policy elements contributing to the prevention of youth homelessness. The evidence review is guided by the following questions:

  • Which factors (or patterns of factors) are known to increase risk of youth
    homelessness?
  • Which policies and programmes are effective in preventing youth homelessness?
  • What are the characteristics of effective strategies to prevent youth homelessness?
  • What evidence is still needed to support the prevention of youth homelessness, and how might it be generated?

This report draws upon a careful assessment of this evidence base to develop a set of recommendations to divert young people from experiences of homelessness effectively.

 

Listen to our podcast on youth homelessness below. We ask how youth homelessness is defined, what the situation is here in Wales, what’s being done to tackle the issue, and what further steps need to be taken to eradicate it completely.

Guests include:

Frances Beecher – Chief Executive Officer of Llamau

Jonathan Webb – Former Research Officer at the Wales Centre for Public Policy

Kaitlin Schwan – Senior Researcher at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, based at York University

The episode also includes a pre-recorded interview with independent housing researcher, Tamsin Stirling, who we asked about how well local authorities across Wales are working to get to grips with youth homelessness in their communities

Below you can view our interviews with experts, recorded at our Preventing Youth Homelessness 2020 event:

DOI reference: 10.54454/20181025