Homeless Youth Essay

Between 240,000 and 400,000 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) youth experience at least one episode of homelessness each year in the United States (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2008). LGBT status increases risk of homelessness and impedes the youth’s attempts to exit homelessness, therefore the youth experience high rates of sex work, HIV risk, substance use, mental illness, and suicidal ideation (Keuroghlian, Shtasel, & Bassuk, 2014; Tyler, 2008; Walls & Bell, 2011). The recognition

Many youths choose to run away from home for many reasons including escaping an abusive and/or neglectful home environment, however life on the street does not provide safety from abuse and victimization. In fact, over 70% of all runaway/thrownaway youth are in danger during their time away from home due to factors such as substance dependency, sexual or physical abuse and being in a high-crime area (Hammer et al, 2002). Nineteen percent of runaway/thrownaway youth are substance dependent and 17%

Occasionally referred to as “the unaccompanied youth” or “the runaway youth”, the homeless youth are teens under the age of eighteen who are in a dire need of parental or foster care. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the US Department of Justice reports in their most recent study, published in 2002, that there are around 1,682,900 teens that fall into the category of “being homeless” and “the runaway youth” (Homeless and Runaway Youth). This number is uniformly distributed among

2012 designed to assess the experiences of homeless youth organizations in providing services to LGBT youth. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Homeless Youth Provider Survey also assessed the prevalence of LGBT youth within the homeless populations being served by these organizations. According to their findings, as many as 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT. The most common reason found to have caused homelessness amongst LGBT youth was family rejection after coming out.

key characteristics and experiences that contribute to why there is a growing concern for homeless youth in foster care. I found that the author discussed various types of situation that some youth encounter, for example, the involvement into of street crime, property crime, violent crime, drug crimes; and two general levels of criminal activity. According to the article, it is a growing number of the youths that run away from their placements and decides that they rather live on the streets then

number of homeless that live on the streets in Canada and 8,000-11,000 of those people are youth in the age range of only 16-24 years of age. This number has increased and grown bigger by the days due to social and economic factors and coming up with a solution becomes more complicated. Many teens become homeless because of hardship in their life or addiction and mental/psychical disabilities, which affects the integrity of that person. This essay will explain the factors of how youth end up on

Homeless Youth Homelessness is defined as having no fixed place to sleep at night. This includes people staying in motels until their money runs out, those staying with friends, those staying in shelters, and those sleeping inside or out whatever space they can find to protect themselves. The number of homeless people has been growing and it has become a serious problem in our society. Every night in Canada there are thousands of people living on the streets. This type of behaviour is considered

Homeless youth are often missed judge and called delinquent. There are many associated risk factors have been identified for youth homelessness having aging-out of foster care, family conflict and or running away or being thrown out, physical or sexual abuse and coming out about their sexuality. (O’Sullivan-Oliveira, J. Burke, J. 2009 p 154). Youth can be thrown out from their living environment by their parent or legal guardians. Youth that have been abandoned by their families because of poverty

incredibly vulnerable group is the homeless youth due to their young age and lack of education. According to Edidin, Ganim, Hunter, & Karnik (2012) on any particular night in the United States there are ~2 million homeless youth living on the streets, in shelters, or in other temporary accommodation. Youth become homeless for multiple reasons whether it be because they have aged out of foster care, ran from home, were kicked out of their home, or because they have become homeless along with their family members

national estimates, this is roughly 5% of the population (Rosario et al., 2012). The definition of homelessness is rather ambiguous which contributes to such discretion when working with the homeless population. Often, the terms “homeless” and “runaway” are used interchangeably in research studies on homeless youth. However, running away is considered episodic whereas homelessness is a longterm circumstance (Schmitz & Tyler, 2014). For the purpose of this study, homelessness is defined in it’s broadest