Essay On Teenage Homelessness In America

Another huge portion of the homeless population is the youth. This is commonly overlooked probably for the sheer fact that it is hard to accept. It is hard to accept that there are teenagers and young adults who instead of attending $30,000 a year schools are left scrounging on the streets for their next warm meal. They are two completely different worlds that seem almost impossible to coexist. These high school to college aged men and women are most likely parentless. They are sometimes forced to rely on selling sex or drugs just to survive. Going through all of this at such a young age undoubtedly has an influence on these kids and puts them at maturity levels that are most likely more than twice that of their age. A life so hard for us

In youth homelessness these children, adolescents and even young adults are being exposed to many dangerous drugs, alcohol, and people.

Homelessness, especially among the youth (12-24 years of age), is difficult to capture in data due to the invisibility of this population. The homeless and independent youth are, generally, not part of formal institutions like homeless shelters or mental health systems. As a response to the dire circumstances these youths face on a daily basis, they come to rely on internal informal networks that they trust. Consequently, it is common for young, homeless and independent, individuals to temporarily stay with different friends: constantly moving from one couch to another. This network of trust is invaluable to this population and is a potential key for policy makers to look at unconventional methods to identify and address the most pressing needs.

Societal, community, intrapersonal and the individual all are seen as contributing to the way a person approaches a health behavior. This framework has shown to be used extensively in explaining substance use among homeless adolescents. There is no single factor that causes homelessness or substance use, this framework acknowledges that and gives important information for prevention and treatment. There are many different reasons that youth become homeless. Ray (2006) found that family conflict was the primary cause of all homelessness in adolescents. Whatever the cause, the fact is that homeless adolescents need to have the focus of public health professionals to prevent increased numbers of HIV, and other blood-bore illnesses, drug overdoses, violence, and death.

Sometimes youth are told to leave their home because their family have become unable to provide for their specific mental health or disability needs. Some youth are even forced out of their homes because their parent(s) could no longer afford to take care of them. In certain cases, a child may become homeless along with their family due to economic problems. While these youth do become homeless with their families they are later separated form them due to child welfare policies. In addition, youth who live in foster homes are more likely to become homeless at an earlier age due to being discharged from the foster care system. Those youth who have aged out of the system often have little too no income and therefore are at a higher risk of becoming

Imagine being 16 and men bedroom being a sleeping bag under a bridge or a cot in an overfilled shelter. Sadly that is a reality a lot of youth face. Homelessness is a huge problem alone, but having so many young people on the streets is even worse. To solve this problem we must first understand how young people are put in this position, how many young people are homeless, and what being in this position does to them.

The researchers who gathered the youth found a majority of them living in the streets for 2 years or longer. The other homeless participants who were in shelters reported their homelessness ranged between 2 days to 6 years. After the study was complete, it revealed the most common reasons for seeking health care was because of complications related to drug use, chronic conditions, prenatal care, and mental health

When researchers asked a group of homeless youth why they left home, their responses were rather heartbreaking. Among some of their answers included were, “she kicked me out because I was too much of a problem for her”, “my parents are abusive and drug addicts”, and “because my mom never had a house and did drugs” (Bernstein, Fosters 2008). Unfortunately the number of homeless youths seems to be steadily rising. The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development database found that there were twice as many youths, namely between the ages of thirteen to twenty-two, living on the streets in 2013-2014 than in 2004-2005. Shelters are not able to keep up with these growing numbers, as the National Coalition for the

As shown above, homeless teens face many problems then just dealing with not being able to get education and or getting jobs to maybe provide for their family, siblings or kids. These teens deal with even deeper issues with self-esteem and suicide thoughts and sometimes end up in even worse situations because of it and get into drug and alcohol by being influenced by the people that they surround themselves by or other homeless people they see. Being a teen is already stressful and being homeless and having so many responsibilities on you can take a toll on you. Some things that we can do to help homeless teens are by providing them with a shelter to stay at and getting them education and if they are old enough then helping them with getting

On dosomething.org it says that the department of justice estimates that 1.7 million teens expirience teen homelessness every year. So many teens are homeless because of many reasons. Nationalhomless.org says that there are catagories that different reasons for homlessness occurs . these categories are: family problems, economic problems,and residential instability. Some more specific reasons may be abuse of one way or another, an addiction of a family member, or even neglect from family members. In a study done by the U.S. department of health and human

It is important to remember that young people experiencing homelessness have the same needs, hopes and aspirations as other young people.

Data shows that there are approximately 930,200 American children that are homeless for reasons beyond their control (Kelly, par. 1). Unfortunately, many young children becomes homeless when they leave a foster home or some other children’s facilities to live on their own; they have no educational skills and can not afford housing or they do not want the responsibility. Without a responsible job landlords will not give these youths a place to live. Many of these youth were physically abused at home, at risk of violence, parents on drugs, runaways, exploited, sexual abused, and out of home placement (Bodine,

Homeless young people on the street are a vulnerable group and it becomes a major social issue more often. It is imagined many causations to this problem, but two principal factors are family conflict and drug abuse (Mallett et al., 2005). Martijn and Sharpe (2006) say that young people usually leave home for having frequently conflicts with parents or having a childhood trauma (as cited in Mayock et al., 2010). The family with the instable housing situation, such as violence and sexual abuse, may force young people to leave home believed by Baron (2003) and Gaetz (2004) (as cited in Mayock et al., 2010). However, normal family conflicts without any violence are also considered as a primary factor to lead young people

Homeless runaway youth are on the rise in the US and is a serious issue. One in seven youth between the ages of 10 and 18 will run away and never return (National Runaway Switchboard, 2010). A homeless runaway youth refers to those individuals under the age of 18 that

direction of becoming homeless at a young age. Before criticizing their “poor” choices, there are